Molecular visualization of cellular complexity.

Structural biology has paved the way for a ground-up description of biological systems, contributing atomic structures of proteins amenable to crystallography, uncovering high-resolution maps of ‘difficult’ proteins with the cryo-electron microscopy revolution, and filling knowledge gaps regarding dynamic and disordered proteins using nuclear magnetic resonance. From the very beginning, the cellular context of a protein of interest was considered; John Kendrew chose sperm whale myoglobin for crystallization because of myoglobin’s importance and abundance within the dark red tissues of diving animals and thereby solved the first three-dimensional protein structure1. Together, cell and structural biology work synergistically towards a common goal: to build a mechanistic description of biological systems.