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(PhysOrg.com) -- Knowing the structure of a molecule is an important part of understanding it, but quite often it’s even more important to know how the molecule moves -- more specifically, the vibrational dynamics that drive and control its interactions with other molecules in chemical reactions. That’s particularly true of proteins, the enormously complex molecular structures found at the heart of important life processes such as cell signaling, ion transport, and other functions. But most of the available techniques for studying the vibrational properties of a protein run into some vexing limitations, especially when probing the lower frequencies at which the proteins actually do their job.

A new microscope invented by scientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus will let researchers use an exquisitely thin sheet of light -- similar to that used in supermarket bar-code scanners -- to peer inside single living cells, revealing the three-dimensional shapes of cellular landmarks in unprecedented detail. The microscopy technique images at high speed, so researchers can create dazzling movies that make biological processes, such as cell division, come alive.