A blog about how to overcome the limits of human existence, through ground truth-oriented understanding. Click to read Universe Conquering, a Substack publication. Launched 12 days ago.

Throughout a tumultuous year in science, researchers opined on policy changes and funding uncertainty, as well as scientific trends and the impact of artificial-intelligence tools on the field.

Primary Work Address: 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02139 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Synthetic Neurobiology Group (Boyden Lab) at the MIT McGov...

In this NeuroResource, Schroeder et al. present a transcriptomic atlas across brain regions and developmental time points in mouse and marmoset. Detailed analysis focused on astrocytes revealed that t...

How to really think of every way of solving a problem

Applying new tools to entire brains, starting with C. elegans, offers the opportunity to uncover how molecules work together to generate neural physiology and how neurons work together to generate…

How to think of every way of solving a problem

Developed by former MIT researchers, focused research organizations (FROs) undertake large research efforts and have begun to contribute to scientific advances.

Developed by former MIT researchers, focused research organizations (FROs) undertake large research efforts and have begun to contribute to scientific advances.

Three Short Stories About How to Increase Luck Through Skill

Curtailment of freedoms and disregard for the rule of law in the United States is destroying the ability of science to serve the nation’s, and the world’s, interests. Researchers can take action.

Find out why K. Lisa Yang is on the TIME100 Most Influential People in Philanthropy 2025 list.

How do you plan what to learn, to solve the problems you care about?

YouTube video by Protocol Labs

One of the simplest, most over-studied organisms in the world is the C. elegans nematode. For 13 years, a project called OpenWorm has tried—and utterly failed—to simulate it.

YouTube video by Protocol Labs

Millions of ribosomes are packed within mammalian cells, yet we lack tools to visualize them in toto and characterize their subcellular composition. In this study, we present ribosome expansion micros...

This method provides a robust approach for performing expansion microscopy in plant protoplasts for imaging single-cell and subcellular compartments at greatly enhanced resolution.

Genetically encoded dense core vesicle markers, compatible with immunohistochemistry and expansion microscopy, enable single-vesicle resolution in Drosophila using confocal microscopy.

Single-cell decisions made in complex environments underlie many bacterial phenomena. Image-based transcriptomics approaches offer an avenue to study such behaviors, yet these approaches have been hin...

Program Location & Travel About Home GEF25, organized in the 10th anniversary year of ExM, focuses on cutting-edge advancements in expansion microscopy, as a part of global initiatives to democratize ...

A decade in, expansion microscopy is unlocking insights across biology and medicine.

A decade in, expansion microscopy is unlocking insights across biology and medicine.

Complex carbohydrates called glycans play crucial roles in regulating cell and tissue physiology, but how they map to nanoscale anatomical features must still be resolved. Here, we present the first nanoscale map of mucin-type O-glycans throughout the entirety of the Caenorhabditis elegans model organism. We constructed a library of multifunctional linkers to probe and anchor metabolically labeled glycans in expansion microscopy (ExM). A flexible strategy was demonstrated for the chemical synthesis of linkers with a broad inventory of bio-orthogonal functional groups, fluorophores, anchorage chemistries, and linker arms. Employing C. elegans as a test bed, metabolically labeled O-glycans were resolved on the gut microvilli and other nanoscale anatomical features. Transmission electron microscopy images of C. elegans nanoanatomy validated the fidelity and isotropy of gel expansion. Whole organism maps of C. elegans O-glycosylation in the first larval stage revealed O-glycan “hotspots” in unexpected anatomical locations, including the body wall furrows. Beyond C. elegans, we validated ExM protocols for nanoscale imaging of metabolically labeled glycans on cultured mammalian cells. Together, our results suggest the broad applicability of the multifunctional reagents for imaging glycans and other metabolically labeled biomolecules at enhanced resolutions with ExM.