NIH Record - National Institutes of Health
Strings of blue and green, looking like cracked glass

January 16, 2026

Strings of blue and green, looking like cracked glass

On the Cover

3D image of actin in a cell. Actin is an essential protein in a cell’s skeleton (cytoskeleton). It forms a dense network of thin filaments in the cell. Here, researchers used a technique called stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) to visualize the actin network in a cell in three dimensions.

Xiaowei Zhuang, HHMI, Harvard University, and Nature Publishing Group

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