Caught in a sticky situation

Caught in a sticky situation

Nicola Dark

This image shows a human monocyte, a type of white blood cell, with platelets attached to it. Normally, platelets stick to each other to help stop bleeding when we get a cut, but they can also attach to other cells in the blood and influence how those cells behave. Because platelets are so small, we used a special technique called expansion microscopy, which gently swells the cells to magnify them and reveal fine details that would otherwise be hard to see, even with a microscope!