Checking and fixing the cellular nanomachinery: towards medical nanoscopy

Most diseases, regardless of their diverse etiologies, manifest themselves as defects of cellular proteins. Cellular proteins have been recently shown to form specific complexes exerting their functions as if they were nanoscopic machines. Such nanoscopic protein machines cooperate in functional modules, yielding extended, highly compartmentalized networks. The classical resolution limits of fluorescence microscopy have also been recently overcome, opening the nanometer domain to live-cell imaging. Together, progress in functional proteomics and live-cell imaging provide novel possibilities for directly analyzing and modifying nanoscopic protein machines in living cells and tissues.