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It sounds like hype from a late-night infomercial: It can twist and bend without breaking! And wait, there's more: It could someday help you fend off disease. But in this case it's true, thanks to scientists from several institutions including the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They derived atomic-scale resolution structures of the cell's protein-making machine, the ribosome, at key stages of its job.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a super-resolution microscopy technique that is answering long-held questions about exactly how and why a cells defenses fail against some invaders, such as plague, while successfully fending off others like E.coli. The approach is revealing never-before-seen detail of the cell membrane, which could open doors to new diagnostic, prevention and treatment techniques.