Microscopy preprints – applications in biology

Posted by FocalPlane, on 9 March 2026

Here is a curated selection of preprints published recently. In this post, we share preprints that use microscopy tools to answer questions in biology.

The GLUT4 storage vesicle pool is maintained by intracellular nanovesicle traffic
Elizabeth Courthold, Gabrielle Larocque, Stephen J. Royle

Kindlin-2-Moesin interaction orchestrates sprouting angiogenesis via modulating endothelial membrane mechanics and VEGF signaling
Lu Wang, Yuxin Fu, Zeyang Yu, Yi Lei, Tianjing Yang, Jiayu Liu, Nina Ma, Yuming Liu, Kunfu Ouyang, Kai Zhang, Junhao Hu, Xi Fang, Ying Shen, Jing Zhou, Xiaohong Wang

Morphological, molecular, and functional evidence for a CNS-like oral nerve ring in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis
Ruohan Zhong, Chris W. Seidel, Anna M.L. Klompen, Matthew C. Gibson

Jag2 patterns early differentiation in the epidermal stem cell layer
Sophie Viala, Vandana Nathan, Jacinthe Sirois, Olivia Costanzo, Daniela Perez Laguna, Mauna Musulchi, Milan Heck, Michael H. Mouradian, Katie Cockburn

Mechanism of membrane perforation in rotavirus cell entry
Marilina de Sautu, Conny Leistner, Tomas Kirchhausen, Simon Jenni, Stephen C. Harrison

Figure extracted from de Sautu, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Structural basis for CTCF-mediated chromatin organization
Manuel Osorio Valeriano, Alexander C. Stone, Masahiro Nagano, Bonnie Su, Laura Caccianini, Anders S. Hansen, Lucas Farnung, Seychelle M. Vos

Cell-intrinsic compliance mechanism enables release of tensile stress to prevent tissue rupture
Chun Wai Kwan, Shunta Sakaguchi, Michiko Takeda, Takefumi Kondo, Yu-Chiun Wang

Mechanical coordination of counter-gradient growth maintains organ curvature in the apical hook
Sara Raggi, Hemamshu Ratnakaram, Adrien Heymans, Loitongbam Lorinda Devi, Özer Erguvan, Siamsa M. Doyle, François Jobert, Asal Atakhani, Sijia Liu, Manuel Petit, Jürgen Kleine-Vehn, Krzysztof Wabnik, Stéphane Verger, Stéphanie Robert

Mechanically-induced Septin Networks Protect Nuclear Integrity
Margaret E. Utgaard, Alexia Caillier, Shreya Chandrasekar, Joseph J. Tidei, Harikrushnan Balasubramanian, Rachel M. Lee, Owen Puls, Satya Khuon, Jesse Aaron, Teng-Leong Chew, Jordan R. Beach, Patrick W. Oakes

In situ structures of the ciliary tip show the multi-step mechanism of axoneme assembly
Helen E. Foster, Samuel E. Lacey, H. Noor Verwei, Margot Riggi, Jose Davila-Velderrain, Gaia Pigino

Cell-matrix mechanosensing and cellular metabolic demand are linked through SKT and mTORC2
Milan Collins, Lorna Young, Emily Goodall, Beth Hammond, Daniel Newman, Paul Atherton, Patrick Caswell, Tobias Zech

Retinal waves shape starburst amacrine cell dendrite development through a direction-selective dendritic computation
Miah N. Pitcher, Aanica S.B. Gonzales, Raul Habib, Marla Feller

Chloroplast-encoded small subunit extensions reshape the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome
Florent Waltz, Philippe A. Lehner, Philippe Van der Stappen, Lukas Kater, Stefan Pfeffer, Benjamin D. Engel

Figure extracted from Waltz, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Nuclear plasticity regulates macrophage phagocytic capacity in vivo
Clelia Amato, Rosalind Heron, Will Wood

Correlative Synchrotron X-ray Microscopy Reveals Dose- and Division-Dependent Nanoparticle Redistribution in Macrophages
Isabella Scarpa, Renata S. Rabelo, Aline O. Pereira, Francine F. Fenandes, Flávia E. Galdino, Maiara F. Terra, Maria Harkiolaki, Florian Meneau, Carla C. Polo, André A. Thomaz, Ana J. Pérez Berná, Mateus B. Cardoso

Super-resolution microscopy reveals distinct epigenetic states regulated by estrogen receptor activity
Tara Akhshi, Shengen Shawn Hu, Esme Wheeler, Christian Hellriegel, Douglas S Richardson, Nicole Cayting, Nicole A. Traphagen, Wangu Mvula, Buraq Ahmed, Rinath Jeselsohn, Chongzhi Zang, Myles Brown

Quantitative Cryo-SEM and Fluorescence Microscopy Reveal Native Architecture and Matrix Complexity in P. aeruginosa Biofilms
Goodness O. Osondu-Chuka, Stephan Schandl, Guruprakash Subbiahdoss, Aleksandr Ovsianikov, Olivier Guillaume, Erik Reimhult

Figure extracted from Osondu-Chuka, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

A quantitative census of millions of postsynaptic structures in a large electron microscopy volume of mouse visual cortex
Benjamin D. Pedigo, Bethanny P. Danskin, Rachael Swanstrom, Erika Neace, Sven Dorkenwald, Nuno Maçarico da Costa, Casey M. Schneider-Mizell, Forrest Collman

Figure extracted from Pedigo, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Cooperative Binding of Cytosolic Type III Secretion System Proteins to the Injectisome Revealed by Live-Cell Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy
Olivia I.C. de Cuba, Gopika A. Lekshmi, Caroline F. Tyndall, Andreas Gahlmann

Direct fluorescence detection and volume electron microscopy reveal a role for antibiotic biosynthesis in the bacterial cell envelope
Kalyani N Josyula, Anton Classen, Alma Fernandez, Aart J. Verhoef, Anindito Sen, Paul D Straight

Tubulin acetylation governs organelle remodeling and lysosomal reformation during neuronal differentiation
Chih-Hsuan Hsu, Alexander Josiah Kinrade, Maria Clara Zanellati, Sarah Cohen

Organelle communication networks rewire to support lipid metabolism during neuronal differentiation
Maria Clara Zanellati, Zachary Coman, Disha Bhowmik, Chih-Hsuan Hsu, Richa Basundra, Shannon N. Rhoads, Ngudiankama R. Mfulama, Brandie M. Ehrmann, Mohanish Deshmukh, Sarah Cohen

Whole-Brain Co-Mapping of Gene Expression and Neuronal Activity at Cellular Resolution in Behaving Zebrafish
Emmanuel Marquez-Legorreta, Greg M. Fleishman, Luuk W. Hesselink, Mark Eddison, Kasper Smeets, Carsen Stringer, Philipp J. Keller, Sujatha Narayan, Alex B. Chen, Brett D. Mensh, Scott M. Sternson, Bernhard Englitz, Paul W. Tillberg, Misha B. Ahrens

Figure extracted from Marquez-Legorreta, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Quantification of Aspergillus nidulans Actin Dynamics during Early Growth and Septum Formation
Walker D Huso, Garrett Hill, Greeshma Tarimala, Jiyon Lee, Alexander G Doan, Junghun Lee, Kelsey Gray, Harley Edwards, Steven D Harris, Mark R Marten

Intravital single-molecule imaging reveals cytoskeletal turnover as a driver of membrane remodeling in live animals
Marco Heydecker, Desu Chen, Andrius Masedunskas, Melissa Mikolaj, Kedar Narayan, Jiji Chen, Harshad Vishwasrao, Tobias Meckel, Edna Hardeman, Peter Gunning, Roberto Weigert

Mitochondria – insulin granule crosstalk controls the early stages of granule maturation
Styliani Panagiotou, Kousik Mandal, Sofia Amini, Kia Wee Tan, Samuel B. Stephens, Olof Idevall-Hagren

Filopodia-mediated trans-endocytosis
Hanna Grobe, Marcela Xiomara Rivera Pineda, Sujan Ghimire, Marie-Catherine Laisne, Anna Nylund, Monika Vaitkevičiūtė, Helena Vihinen, Anu Prakash, Johanna Tammi, Marjaana Ojalill, Pia Boström, Pauliina Hartiala, Johanna Englund, Emilia Peuhu, Eija Jokitalo, Guillaume Jacquemet

Figure extracted from Grobe, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Ultrastructural diversity and subcellular organization of nigral Lewy pathology in Parkinson’s disease
Amanda J Lewis, Lukas van den Heuvel, Marta di Fabrizio, Kaliya Bandelier, Daria Proniakova, Domenic Burger, Notash Shafiei, Kazadi Ekundayo, Selene Offringa, Evelien Huisman, John GJM Bol, Wilma DJ Van de Berg, Henning Stahlberg

Nanoscale organization of betaII-spectrin within segments of the membrane-associated periodic skeleton in mouse sciatic nerve axons
Nahir Guadalupe Gazal, Gonzalo Escalante, Lucía F. Lopez, Laurence Goutebroze, Mariano Bisbal, E. Axel Gorostiza, Alan M. Szalai, Fernando D. Stefani, Nicolás Unsain

Figure extracted from Guadalupe Gazal, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Nucleoli as drivers of nuclear remodelling in cardiomyocytes during Heart Failure
Ingrid Matzer, Houcheng Wang, Aleksandra N. Kozyrina, Jiarong Fu, Thomas Iskratsch, Massimo Vassalli, Senka Ljubojevic-Holzer, Julia Gorelik, Pamela Swiatlowska

TGF-β signaling regulates epithelial permeability in Drosophila ovaries by modulating adhesion independent of actomyosin contractility
Harshath Amal, Thea Jacobs, Max Lohrberg, Stefan Luschnig

Local Confinement within Plasma Membrane Nanodomains Drives Constitutive Activity of GPCRs
Xiaohan Zhou, Maria Shemeteva, Louis-Phillipe Picard, François Simon, Aiyan Brown, Gurveen Dhillon, Lucien E. Weiss, R. Scott Prosser, Claudiu C. Gradinaru

The role of MICOS in organizing mitochondrial cristae in malaria parasites
Silvia Tassan-Lugrezin, Irina Bregy, Judith López Orra, Nicholas I. Proellochs, Geert-Jan van Gemert, Rianne Stoter, Felix Evers, Taco W.A. Kooij, Laura van Niftrik

Figure extracted from Tassan-Lugrezin, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Volume EM reveals three-dimensional architecture of the desmosome in epithelial cells and tissue models
Navaneetha Krishnan Bharathan, William Giang, Eunice Chen, Stephanie E. Zimmer, Sonam Lhamo, Danielle M. Jorgens, Jamie L. Inman, Vito Mennella, Manfred Auer, Andrew P. Kowalczyk

Subcellular Characterization of the Molecular Determinants of Ebola Virus VP40 Trafficking and Assembly
Tyler Huth, Ella Wiggenhorn, Susmita Khanal, William Wan

Plasmodium ARK1 regulates spindle formation during atypical mitosis and forms a divergent chromosomal passenger complex
Annu Nagar, Ryuji Yanase, Mohammad Zeeshan, David J. P. Ferguson, Steven Abel, Sarah L. Pashley, Akancha Mishra, Antonius Eze, Edward Rea, Declan Brady, Andrew R. Bottrill, Sue Vaughan, Karine G. Le Roch, David S. Guttery, Anthony A. Holder, Eelco C. Tromer, Pushkar Sharma, Rita Tewari

Cellular protein delivery through membrane potential driven water pores
Jonathan Franke, Palina Dubatouka, Amin Yourdkhani, Sahil Soni, Tillmann Utesch, Juliana Serrano, Tolga Soykan, Martin Lehmann, Han Sun, Jan Vincent V. Arafiles, Christian P. R. Hackenberger

Tissue-scale mechanics controls differentiation strategy and dynamics of epithelial multilayering
Clémentine Villeneuve, Somiealo Azote Epse Hassikpezi, Marga Albu, Matthias Rübsam, Leah C. Biggs, Sabrina Vinzens, Kai Kruse, Anubhav Prakash, Peter Zentis, Elizabeth Lawson-Keister, Gautier Follain, Johanna Ivaska, Carien M. Niessen, M. Lisa Manning, Sara A. Wickström

Cryo-ET reveals nanoscale thick filament disorganization in MYH7 P710R hypertrophic cardiomyopathy cardiomyocytes
Magda Zaoralová, Joseph Yoniles, Prerna Giri, Richard G. Held, Alison Vander Roest, Peter D. Dahlberg, Daniel Bernstein, Alexander R. Dunn, Leeya Engel

Progerin-Induced Nuclear Envelope Remodeling is Shaped by Cell Division and NUP153
Ayse Mubine Turkmen, Jing Wang, Adam Frost, Katharine S. Ullman

Visualizing early Mycobacterium tuberculosis interactions with murine lung macrophages using intravital imaging
Yookyung Jung, Bing Chen, Catherine Vilcheze, William R Jacobs Jr., David Entenberg

Distinct nanoscale membrane organizations of mucins and trans-sialidases in Trypanosoma cruzi
Gonzalo Escalante, Raquel Parada-Puig, Lucía F. Lopez, Alan M. Szalai, María de los Milagros Cámara, Luciano A. Masullo, Oscar Campetella, Juan Mucci, Fernando D. Stefani

In-cell cryo-electron tomography reveals differential effects of type I and type II kinase inhibitors on LRRK2 filament formation and microtubule association
Tamar Basiashvili, Joshua Hutchings, Siyu Chen, Eva P. Karasmanis, W. Alexander Flaherty, Andres E. Leschziner, Elizabeth Villa

Figure extracted from Basiashvili, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Chromogranin A regulates the dynamics of neurosecretion through its interaction with phosphatidic acid
Thomas Ferrand, Alexander Wolf, Fanny Laguerre, Lina Riachy, Antoine Schlichter, Lydie Jeandel, Magalie Bénard, Brice Beauvais, Damien Schapman, Sylvette Chasserot-Golaz, Cathy Royer, Caroline Bérard, Dorthe Cartier, Jiyoung Lee, Luca Grumlolato, Ludovic Galas, Nicolas Chartrel, Pierre-Yves Renard, Youssef Anouar, Sébastien Balieu, Nicolas Vitale, Maité Montero-Hadjadje

Cryo-EM reveals a right-handed double-helix dimer architecture of PCDH15 critical for mechanotransduction
Xiaoping Liang, Roshan Pathak, Xufeng Qiu, Lucas Dillard, Edward C. Twomey, Ulrich Müller

Dopamine vesicles are specified by mechanisms overriding canonical synaptic vesicle size constraints
Kenshiro Fujise, Nasser Karmali, Jaya Mishra, Himari Kimura, Tomoki Tsuji, Atsushi Saito, Nisha Mohd Rafiq

Figure extracted from Fujise, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

A phospholipid-dependent PDK1-AGC kinase cascade regulates pollen tube growth
Remko Offringa, Tong Zhao

The Multifaceted Role of EXOC6A in Ciliogenesis
Te-Lin Lin, Chien-Ting Wu, Tang K. Tang

Heterogeneity in cilia patterning enables multiple flow functions within a single cell
Daphne M. Laan, Aikaterini M. Kourkoulou, Guillermina R. Ramirez-San Juan

Beyond the skin barrier: optical clearing enables non-invasive cortex-wide optical coherence angiography in mice in-vivo
Daewoon Seong, Sungbin Yun, Sangyeob Han, Sagor Biswas, Bosung Kim, Eva Remlova, Daniel Razansky, Jeehyun Kim, Zihao Ou, Mansik Jeon

Remote Control of Cell Signaling through Caveolae Mechanics
Satish Kailasam Mani, Nicolas Tardif, Olivier Rossier, Ismail M. Khater, Xuesi Zhou, Victor Breton, Filipe Nunes Vicente, AV Radhakrishnan, Céline Gracia, Pamela Gonzalez Troncoso, Isabel Brito, Richard Ruez, Melissa Dewulf, Ghassan Hamarneh, Ivan Robert Nabi, Philippe Cuniasse, Pierre Sens, Grégory Giannone, Cédric M. Blouin, Christophe Lamaze

PDZD-8 interacts with LGG-2/LC3 to promote autolysosome formation
Alexandre Pouget, Valentin Meire, Céline Largeau, Claire Boulogne, Baptiste Roelens, Diego Javier Zea, Christophe Lefebvre, Renaud Legouis, Emmanuel Culetto

Dynamic regulation of endogenous transcription factor hubs at single-molecule resolution
Shawn Yoshida, Yanghao Zhong, Akiko Kumagai, William G. Dunphy, Shasha Chong

Microtubules sustain the fidelity of cellularization in a coenocytic relative of animals
Margarida Araújo, Marine Olivetta, Paolo Ronchi, Viola Oorschot, Arif Khan, Christian Tischer, Hiral Shah, Gautam Dey, Omaya Dudin

Figure extracted from Araújo, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Cryo-electron tomography reveals paracellular claudin-15 pores at the tight junction
Evgeniya A. Demchenko, Sarah McGuinness, Shaun Wood, Joseph Kainov, Victoria Pappas, Jotham Austin, Dominic Hyatt, Fatemeh Khalili-Araghi, Le Shen, Christopher R. Weber

Live high-content imaging with automated analysis reveals mitochondrial changes during vascular calcification
Ji-Eun Lee, Agustina Salis Torres, Abhinanda R. Punnakkal, Xiao Tan, Justyna Cholewa-Waclaw, Amirhossein Kardoost, Qiyu Tang, Craig Leighton, Janelle Leong, Daniel B. Greenslade, Dilip K. Prasad, Robert K Semple, Alison N. Hulme, Carsten Marr, Mathew H. Horrocks, Vicky E. MacRae

Orthogonal Force Balance Between Contractility and Shear Stress Governs Podocyte Dynamics
Shumeng Jiang, Pongpratch Puapatanakul, Chengqing Qu, Yin-Yuan Huang, Yuxuan Huang, Kaye E. Brathwaite, Carmen M. Halabi, Jeffrey H Miner, Guy M. Genin, Hani Y Suleiman

Rab9 depletion enhances human adenovirus type 26 transduction efficiency through increased internalization and reduced late endosomal/lysosomal retention
Isabela Drašković, Davor Nestić, Lucija Lulić-Horvat, Jelena Martinčić, Mario Stojanović, Gabriela N. Condezo, Klara Kašnar, Carmen San Martín, Jerome Custers, Dragomira Majhen

E. coli extracellular matrix: a tunable composite with hierarchical structure
Macarena Siri, Agustín Mangiarotti, Anne Seewald, Nikolai Rosenthal, Shahrouz Amini, Emeline Raguin, Peter Fratzl, Cécile M. Bidan

Figure extracted from Siri, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Cryo-EM and single molecule visualization unravel the role of human condensin II activation by M18BP1 in driving DNA compaction
Alessandro Borsellini, Sebastian Chamera, Valentina Cecatiello, Joanna Andrecka, Alessandro Vannini

The 3D Ultrastructure of C. elegans Gut Granules
Grant Archer, Sam Bartlowe, Bilegtugs Bayarbadrakh, Dawson Bok, Carolina Bushong, Anna Carroll, Megan Cole, Eric J. Dahl II, Nicholas Denier, Ahmed Elewa, Hafsa El Harchi, Daniel Fisher, Hannah Grant, Rachel Grinfeld, Aliyah Grijalva, Aiden Hale, Cara Hendricks, Melek Iskandar, Sharron Kagan, Nidhi Mistry, Hope Keuneke, Lauryn Lammers, Annie Lyons, Quinn Maclin, Tatum Moore, Connor Munro, Gavin Nickerson, Brando Papalia, Kate Peacock, Lauren Ritzman, Aiden Ross, Rishi Samineni, Max Scales, Lillian Schotz, Wyatt Sikkema, Trinity Slabaugh, Autumn Sorenson, Raymond Swisher, Seyana Sutherland, Daniel Valdes, Faith Ward, Paulina Wojdyla

Figure extracted from Archer, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Membrane lipid composition and endocytosis modulate Wingless release from secreting cells
Ines Alvarez-Rodrigo, David Willnow, Cyrille Alexandre, Claire Lebarbenchon, Annabel Borg, Heather Findlay, Ikram Arahouan, Yuguang Zhao, Florencia di Pietro, Svend Kjaer, Paula Booth, Reinhard Bauer, E. Yvonne Jones, Yohanns Bellaïche, Jean-Paul Vincent