Single-cell density measurement helps track disease

摘要

Cell density changes dur ing important processes such as differentiation, apoptosis, disease, and malignancy, but until now a means for precisely measuring the density of an individual cell did not exist. Inspired by a technique that Archimedes reportedly used to measure the density of a king's crown, William Grover et al. (pp. 10992-10996) used a tiny mass sen sor to weigh single cells in two fluids of different densities.