Grigorieff, an HHMI investigator at Brandeis University, has been appointed one of the first group leaders at HHMI's new Janelia Farm research campus, which opens later this year. He uses electron microscopy to visualize tiny three-dimensional protein structures inside cells. That means grappling with a sea of details. A single molecular machine may contain dozens of proteins, each with hundreds of amino acids. To understand how it works, you need to "open it up, see what's inside, and see how those bits and pieces fit together," Grigorieff says. And that's where microscopy comes in.

Mouse neuroblastoma cells were stimulated to differentiate in vitro, and then labeled fluorescently. The image, captured with an epifluorescence microscope, shows actin (blue) and microtubules (green) in two such cells during the early stages of neurite outgrowth (dna is yellow). Individual channels were subsequently overlaid and colorized.

Photo: Courtesy of Torsten Wittmann