Clot Contraption

This movie shows an artificial blood vessel healing itself after a wound. The microfluidic device consists of a layer of human endothelial cells [the cells that line blood vessels in the body] with a valve positioned beneath. Donor human blood is pumped across the endothelial cell layer and, when the valve is released, a wound is created. In the movie, blood cells and platelets can be seen flooding out from the wound until eventually a clot of cells and fibrin (in green) – an insoluble extracellular protein that forms a sticky fibrous mesh – is formed. The creators of the device designed it to allow researchers an unprecedented view of clot formation in real time under a microscope. Their idea was that such devices could provide a simple, uniform system for investigating how diseases, drugs and other factors accelerate or delay the formation of clots.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Video from work by Yumiko Sakurai and colleagues, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University
• Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
• Image/video copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Nature Communications, February 2018