Art 3. What makes you stronger does kill you: Cell death propagates like forest wildfire

Photography and artwork by Vivian Lee

Materials and Methods

Borderless cell death propagation from the center after induction of cell survival and cell death simultaneously. Height of green bar indicates the level of cell survival induction, and yellow bar indicates the cell death. Image created using Zeiss Axio Observer 7 inverted 729 microscope.

Description

Cell death propagation to neighboring cells, leading to borderless large-scale cell death. This is analogous to a forest wildfire, where igniting one tree leads to a forest fire. Dead cells are colored as fire, and live cells are colored as trees. In this scenario, the induction with promoter of cell survival actually sensitizes the cell to the death inducer, and that tight cell-to-cell interaction serves as an abundance of fuel to the forest fire. Hence, what makes you stronger does kill you.

Submitted by Jen-Hao Cheng