Contact Tracing

In 2020 we saw that keeping track of every person someone encounters, and contacting them should you need to, can be tricky. Imagine trying to do the same thing at a microscopic scale. Just like people, cells’ nature is to constantly interact with those around them, and their very purpose is often defined by these exchanges. Keeping track of these minute meetings could help explain the complex web of processes that both sustain healthy life and drive disease development. A new system uses nanobodies to affix fluorescent proteins to the outside of cells, and then reveal cell-cell interactions. Physical contact is highlighted as the brightly coloured tag is passed like a tennis ball between velcro pads, such as when cancer cells (green) emit molecules towards neurons (purple). By shining a light on how cancer interacts with its environment, this technique might illuminate new approaches to treatment.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Rui Tang and colleagues
• Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, October 2020