A complete understanding of complex dynamic cellular processes such as cell migration or cell adhesion requires the integration of atomic level structural information into the larger cellular context. While direct atomic-level information at the cellular level remains inaccessible, electron microscopy, electron tomography and their associated computational image processing approaches have now matured to a point where sub-cellular structures can be imaged in three dimensions at the nanometer scale. Atomic-resolution information obtained by other means can be combined with this data to obtain three-dimensional models of large macromolecular assemblies in their cellular context. This article summarizes some recent advances in this field.
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