Now in our 13th year of bringing you beautiful imagery from biomedical science every day

Search the archive of over 4000 images

Crowd Surfing

Insight into how throngs of molecules behave

07 October 2019

Crowd Surfing

Our cells are crammed with life – jostling crowds of macromolecules, like these proteins and lipids vying for space in a computer model of a bacterial cell. With each having a purpose and a place to be, the situation looks chaotic, but new experiments suggest crowding actually helps certain particles travel faster. Researchers piped molecules of different sizes and textures into a microfluidic device designed to mimic real-life microscopic crowds. They discovered that squishy ones, more closely resembling particles in found living cells, squeeze between 'crowder' molecules, moving from crowded areas to where there's space. Such concentration gradients are essential to help traffic into and out from cells, and now it seems inside them too. The next step is to find ways to control crowds inside cells, revealing new ways to guide the flow of macromolecules in health and disease.

Written by John Ankers

Search The Archive

Submit An Image

Follow on Tumblr

Follow on Instagram

What is BPoD?

BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

Read More

BPoD is also available in Catalan at www.bpod.cat with translations by the University of Valencia.