Imaging Life Across Scales

Visualising biological processes across scales is essential to understanding how life functions - from molecular assemblies to cells, tissues, and beyond. At the Centre for Molecular Cell Biology, we use cutting-edge imaging approaches to reveal the dynamic organisation of living systems in space and time.

Our researchers employ cryo-electron microscopy, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, and live-cell imaging to capture biological structures and processes across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. These techniques enable us to resolve molecular architectures at near-atomic detail while tracking their behaviour and interactions within cells and tissues. By integrating imaging with functional perturbation and computational modelling, we uncover how cellular organisation emerges, adapts, and responds to environmental and physiological cues. This allows us to directly link structure to function across scales.

This theme enables discoveries in cell development, disease, and environmental adaptation, providing mechanistic insight into how complex biological systems operate and change. It also opens new opportunities for therapeutic intervention and bioengineering by revealing previously inaccessible aspects of cellular organisation.

Our imaging research is inherently collaborative, bringing together expertise in physics, biology, engineering, and computation to push the boundaries of what can be visualised and understood in living systems.