Scientists at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and the Maxson lab at Cornell described a laser‑based approach that could enhance cryo‑electron tomography (cryo‑ET) image quality by improving temporal precision during data collection. Published in eLife, the work proposes integrating brief laser pulses to reduce motion blur and sharpen reconstructions of macromolecular complexes. The technique targets structural biology and neuroscience, where cryo‑ET resolves molecular machines in native cellular contexts. If adopted broadly, the method could accelerate mechanistic studies underpinning drug target validation and the structural characterization of membrane proteins and synaptic complexes.