Plasmodium is the parasite causing malaria, one of the deadliest parasitic diseases. The parasite requires two hosts —the Anopheles mosquito and the human— to complete its life cycle and goes through different forms at each stage of its life cycle. Transitioning from one form to the next involves a massive reorganization of the cytoskeleton. Two teams from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have shed new light on the cytoskeleton organization in Plasmodium. Their research, published in PLOS Biology, details the organization of the parasite's skeleton at an unprecedented scale, adapting a recently developed technique called expansion microscopy. Cells are "inflated" before imaging, providing access to more structural details, at a nanometric scale. The study identifies traces of an organelle called "conoid," which was thought to be lacking in this species despite its crucial role in host invasion of closely related parasites.