Filopodia

The ‘Filopodia’ temporary tattoo was designed for the Gallop lab group to represent their research as part of the Tattoo my Science project.

Filopodia

Some cells can move and interact with their environment by producing finger-like structures called filopodia. Filopodia can work like “sticky fingers” to help the cell move and can receive information like antennae.

This cell is a special type of neuron with many filopodia, called a retinal ganglion cell. It comes from a frog eye and connects to the frog’s brain to help the animal to see.

Design by Vasja Urbancic

Gallop Lab Group

Signalling to the actin cytoskeleton

Cells move during embryonic development and throughout the life of an organism. When they move, cells reorganise a system of filaments – the actin cytoskeleton – that gives them their shape and exerts force on the surrounding tissues. When regulation of the actin cytoskeleton is disrupted it can lead to cancer metastasis, intellectual disability, kidney dysfunction and other problems.

Jenny Gallop colour portrait

Meet Jenny Gallop

Come inside the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, to meet Jenny Gallop and hear her describe her work on actin, the cell’s skeleton.

An illustration showing three friends chatting about a DNA tattoo the the person in the middle has

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