Electron videography captures moving dance between proteins and lipids

In a first demonstration of "electron videography," researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and the Georgia Institute of Technology have captured a microscopic moving picture of the delicate dance between proteins and lipids found in cell membranes. The researchers achieved videography by combining a novel water-based transmission electron microscopy method with detailed, atom-level computational modeling. The water-based technique involves encapsulating nanometer-scale droplets in graphene so they can withstand the vacuum in which the microscope operates. "This is the first time we are looking at a protein on an individual scale and haven't frozen it or tagged it," said Aditi Das, one of the scientists involved in this study.