#ciliates

The Big Cell

An organism composed of one giant (relatively speaking of course) cell – this one is Stentor which can be as big as 2mm – is the perfect model for spying on the formation of any cell's inner structures. Researchers even performed microsurgery on Stentor as they discovered different genes are active in locations across the cell to bring about the various structures and their functions

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Ashley R. Albright and colleagues

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), April 2026

To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wildflower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour

X-X-X    X-X-X    X-X-X

"We've also made some other upgrades so we can revisit techniques we use on our older microscopes. Like a polarizer, because who doesn't love this shiny, iridescent stuff? But we're not just sticking with what we've known. Thanks to this upgrade, we've got a whole new way to look at cells: fluorescence microscopy. And we are so excited for this one."

Journey to the Microcosmos- We Upgraded Our Microscope... Again!