Question: is there another possible way to investigate cells with objects other than telescopes?

Dawn Lau answered on 23 Jun 2016:

Telescopes are for looking at objects far away, and microscopes are for looking at things up close. So we use microscopes to look at cells in their intact state.

However, if we just want to measure the levels of certain proteins inside a cell, we don’t need microscopes to do that. We break the cells apart so that the proteins inside are released into solution, then we use a technique called western blotting to specifically identify proteins that we want to measure. This technique involves separating the proteins in solution in a gel and transferring that to a special paper, then using antibodies to identify the proteins. This results in a horizontal band on the paper which we can only detect with special chemicals and a camera.