This isn't an alien's eyeball, but a 15-micron-wide stem cell taken from human hip bone marrow. Silvia A Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman, a stem biology research team at King's College London, produced this photograph using cryogenic scanning electron microscopy. "We put the cells in hydrogel and then tried to modulate the properties of this material to mimic the natural environment of the cell," says Gentleman, 37.
The sample contained 500,000 cells packed into a 5mm2 cube. It was frozen at around -150°C - the point at which cryogenics begins - then broken in half, so that cells could be observed on the broken surface. "It's the only method that allows us to see both the cell and its environment," says Gentleman.
"This one just happened to break right where we could see the cell and the material around it."
The group's aim is to determine how a stem cell can be influenced by its surroundings. By modifying the local environment, they can select what kind of cell it will end up developing into - for instance, a bone, cartilage or fat cell - to regrow a certain tissue.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
