|
Interactive Features |
|
|
|
The Neuron
Experiment with Children's virtual neuron to see what conditions are needed to make it fire and what happens when you connect it to other neurons. This interactive feature also provides step-through animations illustrating how electrical currents move through the cell and how it passes signals on to other neurons.
|
|
|
|
How cancer grows and spreads
This animated Flash presentation illustrates the growth, progression and metastasis of carcinomas, the type of cancer that accounts for more than 90% of all cancer cases. Using the presentation's "roadmap," you'll be able to choose your own route as you travel from one possible cancer stage to the next.
|
|
|
|
|
Make a micrograph
Creating a micrograph -- a photo taken through a microscope -- is not simply a matter of attaching a camera to a microscope and releasing the shutter. Rather, it's a multistep process that involves "staining" with antibodies, illuminating with various wavelengths of light, and adding and combining colors. This interactive feature details the process.
|
|
|
|
|
Virtual stem cell laboratory
Create red blood cells, muscle cells, neurons, and other types of specialized cells from an initial "culture" of embryonic stem cells. By adding factors to the cells, you can coax the cells into differentiating into new cell types, and you can find out what scientists know about the cells, including any known or potential therapeutic applications.
|
|
|
|
|
Tensegrity in a cell
For more than three decades, Children's researcher Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, has explored and substantiated the notion that living cells are tensegrity structures -- structures that stabilize themselves by balancing tension and compression. With this feature, find out what tensegrity is all about by controlling a cell's internal structural elements.
|
|
|
|
|
Introduction to proteomics
Proteomics -- the identification and study of proteins produced by an organism -- is the hot new science that picks up where the Human Genome Project left off. With this animated, user-controlled interactive, find out how researchers sequence and identify proteins.
|
|
|
|
|
Ingber's egg analogy
Don Ingber, MD, PhD, of Children's Vascular Biology Program, often uses simple analogies in his lectures to explain how tissues form and how diseases develop. In this Flash presentation, he uses eggs in a carton to illustrate how cells in our tissues behave during wound healing and tumor formation.
|
|
|
|
|
Virtual tour of the proteomics laboratory
The new Proteomics Center at Children's Hospital Boston is home to a host of slick instruments. This tour of the center's main lab space gives descriptions of several of these, including the new FT-ICR mass spectrometer. (QuickTime plugin required. If your computer does not have QuickTime, you can download the free plugin.)
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery: Researchers' micrographs
With better tools that help scientists see more clearly the mechanisms that make all living things tick, the line between research images and works of art begins to blur. Here is a gallery of eight micrographs -- photographs shot through a microscope -- taken by Children's Researchers during the course of their studies.
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery: Micrographs from the Cowan Laboratory
Children's researcher Douglas Cowan, PhD, is interested in understanding the molecular and cellular biology of the cardiovascular system, with an emphasis on using engineered tissue and stem cells to improve heart function. This gallery of stunning images includes photos of myoblasts, muscle stem cells and engineered conduction tissue.
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery:
Tissue Engineering
The lab of Children's surgeon Dario Fauza, MD has come closer than any lab in the country to using fetal stem cells, taken from amniotic fluid during pregnancy, to fix congenital defects in babies. This gallery takes you through part of the tissue engineering process.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
