A big discovery in a tiny package

Anyone who has ever needed Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) knows there is a lot of technology involved. Moving into the heart of an MRI scanner, along an imposing white tunnel, there are strong magnetic fields and radio waves producing detailed images of inside the body. These images are integral to a doctor’s diagnosis of injury and disease. MRI is particularly helpful for allowing doctors to take a closer look at soft tissue, ligaments, the spinal cord and brain.

When scientists are creating new drugs, they too need to look inside the proteins that the chemicals they’re working on interact with, to see what’s working and what isn’t.

But that process is difficult, as the technology available isn’t able to look clearly enough at the microscopic details of a single protein molecule and so there is much that remains unknown about many drug treatments, even those approved for use by the public.