Live-Cell Imaging and the Limits of Structural Biology | Eric Betzig on Super-Resolution Microscopy

Almost everything you learn in biology textbooks is a hallucination. You guys have probably seen on the web. You know, there was those beautiful things of here's a cargo on a chin walking along a microtubule like this and it's all like in this vast empty space. I don't know any cell that's a bunch [laughter] of

vast empty space. I'm sorry. It's crowded as [ __ ] There's 10 billion protein molecules. There's 10 billion carbohydrates. It's by far the most complex matter in the known universe. We understand the interiors of neutron stars far better than we understand the interior of cells. There's a reason why only 9% of the drugs that enter phase

one come out phase three cuz we don't know what the we're doing. We don't know the real mechanisms that are going on. And when you start to [ __ ] look at the dynamics, not just the structure, you realize that you had it all wrong. And you realize that so many of the

things that they thought they knew, they you can't be sure that they know. We have to reinvestigate all of it. This week, Mike and Misha sit down with Eric Betsig, Nobel Laurate and UC Berkeley professor who pioneered super resolution microscopy. Eric traces his path from Cornell to Bell Labs, including two stretches of unemployment that produced

some of his best ideas. He reflects on his work in the auto industry in the living room, where he built a microscope to beat the defraction limit. Now he's looking ahead to his new cell observatory, using AI to turn pabytes of live cell imaging into a queryable model of biology. Please welcome Eric Betsy.

>> So Eric, you've been working like battling with defraction limits throughout your career. What is the defraction limit? How would you explain it? Well, it's was first figured out around the end of the 19th century is and it kind of makes sense that if you're going if light is waves and you're trying to get an image through