Researchers at the Universities of Tübingen and Konstanz, the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the Max Planck Institute of Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, and the German Cancer Research Centers have worked together to gain new insights into a protein network which regulates the programmed break down of cells, also known as apoptosis. These Bcl-2 proteins are difficult to investigate as they exchange between the cell’s watery cytoplasm and its oil-like membranes. There are only a few methods which can be used to analyze protein interactions in both environments. With a special type of spectroscopic analysis the team decoded the complex interplay of three components in the network. Their findings are published in the latest Nature Communications.