Live Cell Imaging: The Future for Discoveries

Cellular imaging remains one of the most important techniques in life science research based in part on the notion that "seeing is believing." For a variety of practical reasons including types of probes available and access of probes to their intracellular targets, imaging is currently most often performed on specimens that have been fixed and labeled. Although technically more challenging, live cell imaging enables researchers to study cellular events and processes that cannot be visualized in fixed specimens and to follow short- and long-term dynamic processes to gain deeper insights into the complex mechanisms of cell biology.