Register for the EMBL Insight Lecture 2025

“Seeing the invisible: A new window into the inner workings of life”

The EMBL Insight Lecture 2025 will be presented by Dr. Julia Mahamid, Group Leader at EMBL Heidelberg, on 16 December 2025, 14:00-15:15 CET.

Our cells are filled with countless molecular machines working together to keep us alive. To understand how these machines work, it is essential to have detailed views of their structures. For decades, however, structural biologists have mainly studied these molecules in isolation, outside their natural environment, leaving many questions about how they truly function and interact unanswered. To reveal their real shapes and connections inside cells, scientists now use a technique called cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET). By rapidly freezing cells and tissues to preserve them in a near-natural state and imaging them with powerful electron microscopes, cryo-ET allows us to capture breathtaking snapshots of life at almost atomic detail.

In the EMBL Insight Lecture 2025, Dr. Julia Mahamid will introduce this powerful technique and demonstrate how researchers combine cryo-ET with advanced computer algorithms to identify specific molecules within the complex environment of cells. Using a tiny human pathogen as an example, Julia will show how scientists can observe fundamental processes such as protein synthesis, and even see antibiotics binding to their targets and affecting these processes. This approach is truly transforming our understanding of how life works at its most fundamental level, opening an entirely new window into the invisible world inside us.