There’s a range of scales that is really hard for us to see. Techniques like X-ray crystallography and increasingly, cryo-electron microscopy, let us see molecules to atomic level-of-detail. Microscopes reveal organelles in cells, but seeing the molecular ‘trees’ in the cellular ‘forest’ requires a synthesis of knowledge. David Goodsell was one of the first to show us the emergent beauty of the cell at the molecular level, and work carried out in the Molecular Graphics Laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute under the direction of Art Olson has led to a 3D molecular modeling tools like ePMV, autoPACK and cellPACK.

One of the fruits of this labor is the Visual Guide to the Cell, part of the Allen Cell Explorer. It’s well worth a look at how you can explore 3D representations of the cell in a web browser.