In this Editor’s Collection, Motomu Kanai highlighted ‘Deuteration of terminal alkynes realizes simultaneous live cell Raman imaging of similar alkyne-tagged biomolecules’ by Dr Kosuke Dodo, Dr Mikiko Sodeoka et al. as one of his personal favourite recent Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry articles. Here, we catch up with the authors to find out a little bit more about their research