Intact Actin

“Can you make it a bit bigger?” Ever the request from both back-row lecture attendees squinting at a slide and biologists peering down into life’s tiniest structures. Expansion microscopy is a technique that embeds biological matter in an expandable gel, physically enlarging it so its structures are easier to discern under a microscope. But some components, such as the actin cytoskeleton that provides structure, movement, and internal transport support, are hard to pick out after expansion. A study has applied a protein that integrates into the actin network and carries a tag that can be detected and visualised after expansion. Researchers showed the technique can reveal diverse structures in neurons, mammalian cells, and yeast (pictured, showing actin structures before and after drug treatment to illustrate the potential for visualising drug-induced changes). This will help study the nanoscale organisation of networks fundamental to cell shape and function in health and disease.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Anubhav Dhar and colleagues
• Department of Biochemistry, Division of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, June 2026