A Cell's Travels by Ruffling

The menacing form depicted in this dramatic photograph is not some giant glob of man-eating protoplasm from a science-fiction film. It is actually a hamster's kidney cell magnified 15,000 times by a scanning electron microscope. Such scientific snapshots taken by Caltech Biologist Jean-Paul Revel may offer an important clue to a mystery that has long puzzled scientists: how a living cell moves across a surface. The cell's perambulations, Revel says, are apparently made possible by a strange phenomenon called "ruffling."

According to Revel's interpretation of the photos, the cell sprouts thin, veil-like folds along its forward edge--that is, in the direction of movement. These folds or ruffles grow upward, extend out like an arm and then drop to the surface, adhering firmly to it. Once the forward edge is anchored, the cell flows into and over the ruffles, almost as if it were pulling itself along. As the body of the cell moves over the folds, other ruffles grow along the cell's new leading edge, and in turn attach themselves to the surface. Thus the cell continues its snail-paced journey.

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