Cells

All music festivals should offer these king-size sleeping modules

If you have ever experienced going to a music festival and sleeping in a tent you already know how shitty that can be. Well, these Belgian designers came up with a cool looking and comfortable solution for that: Hexagonal sleeping cells each containing a king-size bed. “We thought, why not stack a honeycomb, not for…

Sploid Omar Kardoudi

Watching cells grow over time is a lot of fun

Andy Lomas made this music video for a song called Seething by Max Cooper. Lomas created software that emulates biological cell growth. Just by adjusting certain parameters, such as the forces between cells or the source and quantity of nutrients,he obtains different forms. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

Sploid Omar Kardoudi

These Paper Models of Microbes and Cells Are Beautiful

Some artists find inspiration from the grand and vast, painting galaxies and taking photos of expansive landscapes. ButRogan Brown finds his inspiration through a microscope, focusing on the infinite mystery of nature’s smallest parts. Brown’s latest piece, Outbreak, is a series of hand-cut paper sculptures in transparent domes, depicting neurons, pathogens, cells, and microbes, a…

Tech News Kate Knibbs

Animation explains how viruses attack our cells to make us sick

Staying healthy is a lot like medieval warfare. Cells vs viruses. There are cells defending their castles and viruses trying to break through. If a sneaky virus manages to attack a cell, the cell fights it and notifies all the other castles about what to build to defend it. Man, learning about biology is so…

Sploid Casey Chan

These Are the First X-Rays of a Living Cell

To get a super-detailed X-ray view inside a cell—right down to the individual molecules—scientists dunk the cell they’re looking at in preservative chemicals. That not only kills the cell, it changes its internal structure ever so slightly, meaning researchers aren’t getting an exact look at the cell’s natural state. Now, scientists at Germany’s DESY Research…

Tech News Bob Sorokanich

Researchers control nanomotors inside living cells for the first time

Scientists from Penn State University have just taken us a major step closer to a Fantastic Voyage future. For the first time ever, researchers have controlled the movements of living cells by inserting tiny synthetic motors directly inside them. Top gif: A spinning assembly chain of rotating HeLa cells shown at 500X magnification. Credit: Mallouk…

io9 George Dvorsky

This Is the World’s First Working Cell Made From Plastic

Scientists have long been toiling to create artificial life, managing to produce man-made cell walls and even synthetic DNA. But now, a team of chemists has produced a functioning cell made from polymers. This is the first ever eukaryotic cell—that just means it contains a nucleus and other sub-units known as organelles within its membrane—to…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe

These Are Some of the Best Microscopic Images of the Year

Every year, GE Healthcare runs a competition to find the best microscopic cell images of the year—and here are some of our favorites from the shortlist. You can actually go look at all of them over on GE’s website andvote for your own favorites, which will help decide which one is crowned the 2014 winner.…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe

Scientists Discover How Cancer Cells Chase After Healthy Cells

Scientists have discovered why cancer cells spread around a human body: They actually chase down healthy cells trying to escape. “Researchers are confident that some cancers work according to this chase-and-run principle,” io9.com reports. “Healthy cells try to escape from tumor cells, only to be followed around the body by malignant cells.” https://gizmodo.com/scientists-may-have-discovered-how-cancer-spreads-aroun-513799545

Sploid Ken Layne

What Your Body Will Do in the Next 30 Seconds

You might think 30 seconds is pretty short. Your body doesn’t though. In order to keep everything running, there’s a lot of things going on in those 30 seconds. Like you’ll make 72 million red blood cells! And shed 174,000 skin cells! And have 25 thoughts. The human body, what a wonderful thing. [BuzzFeed Video]

Tech News Casey Chan

Dramatic diagrams of cell biology and atomic structure belong in a beautiful textbook

Artist MRK (Markos Kay) is best known for his mesmerizing digital videos like The Flow and the aDiatomea series. But he also creates striking static images inspired by cell biology, atomic structure, and his own digital creations. What makes MRK’s images so compelling is the way they make cell biology seem less abstract. Instead of…

io9 Lauren Davis

Scientists Can Print Synthetic Tissue Using Just Water and Oil

3D printing isn’t all about making guns and toys—some researchers are using it to make real medical advances. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford has managed to create a 3D printer that can produce synthetic tissue using just water and oil. 3D printers have been produced in the past that can…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe

Think your sex life is complicated? Imagine having 7 sexes.

No, this isn’t something out of an Octavia Butler novel. It’s Tetrahymena thermophila — a single-celled organism that goes way beyond male and female. It has seven different sexes to choose from. Now a new study published in PLOS has finally made sense of its bizarrely complex and seemingly random sex life. T. thermophila are…

io9 George Dvorsky

This Is What a Virus Infecting a Cell Looks Like

This isn’t a cartoon tree or some strange piece of modern art. In fact, it’s what researchers from the University of Texas at Austin saw when they managed to observe a virus in the act of penetrating a cell. In the image, you can see a T7 virus (red) burrowing its way into an E.…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe

Researchers have built microscopic pyramids as cages for growing cells

This photograph may look like an artifact from an alien world (one with similar taste in architecture to the Egyptians), but it actual depicts a cell living in a pyramid-shaped cage, one that helps us view cells in something closer to their natural environment. One of the problems with studying cells in a petri dish…

io9 Lauren Davis

Scientists Can Now Hack Your Body’s Cell Network

You’ve probably got a cell phone in your pocket, but a new discovery by Swiss researches could put one under your skin. By modifying cells’ reaction to certain genes and enzymes, the researchers were able to make them communicate and exchange information. Kind of like if they were on the phone. You know, a cell…

Tech News Eric Limer

Cyborg Tissue Acts as Smart Scaffolding at a Cellular Level

A team of Harvard University have developed a cyborg tissue material that is a literal mesh of nanoscale electronics and cells, able to support cell growth while at the same time monitoring biological activities at the cellular level. https://gizmodo.com/smart-sutures-use-ultra-thin-technology-to-detect-infec-5937503 Among the team to device such a material are Bozhi Tian (one of Technology Review’s 35…

Tech News Molly Oswaks

Scientists Clear Path to the Fountain of Eternal Youth

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered an efficient and totally safe method to turn adult blood cells “all the way back to the way [they were] when that person was a 6-day-old embryo.” The discovery could be the key to cure the incurable—from heart attacks to severed spinal cord to cancer—and open the door, some…

Tech News Jesus Diaz

Stunning molecular biology illustrations look like floral abstract art

Molecular biology professor and artist David Goodsell has no trouble finding art in the human body. His hand-drawn watercolor illustrations explode with color while offering his visual interpretation of bacteria, viruses, and human cells. Goodsell is currently an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute, and he’s the author of the book The Machinery of…

io9 Lauren Davis

Biological Cells Can Now Do Arithmetic

The biological cell is an extremely advanced microscopic entity that can look after itself, but it’s not exactly what you’d call smart. That’s all about to change, though, because scientists are now making cells that can perform arithmetic—and the next stop stop is a living implant that can act as a computer. Scientists at the…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe

All music festivals should offer these king-size sleeping modules

Watching cells grow over time is a lot of fun

These Paper Models of Microbes and Cells Are Beautiful

Animation explains how viruses attack our cells to make us sick

These Are the First X-Rays of a Living Cell

Researchers control nanomotors inside living cells for the first time

This Is the World’s First Working Cell Made From Plastic

These Are Some of the Best Microscopic Images of the Year

Scientists Discover How Cancer Cells Chase After Healthy Cells

What Your Body Will Do in the Next 30 Seconds

Dramatic diagrams of cell biology and atomic structure belong in a beautiful textbook

Scientists Can Print Synthetic Tissue Using Just Water and Oil

Think your sex life is complicated? Imagine having 7 sexes.

This Is What a Virus Infecting a Cell Looks Like

Researchers have built microscopic pyramids as cages for growing cells

Scientists Can Now Hack Your Body’s Cell Network

Cyborg Tissue Acts as Smart Scaffolding at a Cellular Level

Scientists Clear Path to the Fountain of Eternal Youth

Stunning molecular biology illustrations look like floral abstract art

Biological Cells Can Now Do Arithmetic

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