cell biology

Apoptosis is programmed cell death. Learn how caspases, mitochondria, and Bcl-2 proteins carry it out, and what goes wrong in cancer and autoimmunity.

Organoids are 3D cell cultures that self-organize into organ-like structures. See how they are grown, what they have taught us, and why they are not tiny organs.

Single-cell RNA sequencing measures gene activity in individual cells instead of averaging a tissue. See how the workflow runs, what it finds, and where it misleads.

From Zacharias Janssen's first compound microscope around 1590 to Nobel-winning super-resolution techniques: how the microscope revealed the hidden universe of cells and microbes.

Henrietta Lacks' cells, taken without consent in 1951, became the first immortal human cell line. HeLa cells helped develop the polio vaccine, cancer treatments, and IVF. Her family learned this 25 years later.

In 1665, Robert Hooke looked at thin cork slices through an early microscope and drew tiny box-like chambers he called 'cells.' Two centuries later, that sketch became one of biology's three founding laws.