PubMed · 2026-05-13
Scientists review how decades of microscopy advances—from electron microscopes to AI-powered imaging—have transformed our understanding of how plant and animal cells move proteins and fats to where they're needed, revealing this internal delivery system to be far more dynamic and complex than once thought.
Electron microscopy established the foundational structural map of the cell's secretory organelles and confirmed the directional flow of cargo between compartments, but could only capture static snapshots of dead tissue.
Fluorescence and super-resolution microscopy bridged the gap between light and electron microscopes, making it possible to watch protein traffic and organelle movements in living plant cells at nanoscale resolution for the first time.
AI-driven image segmentation, denoising, and adaptive imaging now enable high-throughput, quantitative analysis of the secretory pathway—turning what was once a labor-intensive manual process into scalable, automated discovery.