What does the world of viruses, bacteria, and cells look like? For years, our understanding of the structure and function of these biological systems has been transformed by a single technology: protein crystallography. In this technique, proteins are removed from their environment, crystallized, and interrogated by X-rays to obtain their static structure. With new imaging technologies, scientists can obtain sharp, clear images of living, dynamic structures in their native environments. X-ray tools are opening frontiers in understanding the reactions happening inside cells by understanding cellular life. This symposium will explore three tools that open vistas, allowing direct visualization and quantitative analysis of the cellular machinery. These technologies bring, tantalizingly close, the possibilities of imaging individual biological molecules that are too small to study, even with the most powerful microscopes.