August 16, 2010, 1:46 pm
Hello E. Coli, You’re Looking Large
By Henry Woodbury
Start with a coffee bean and zoom down to a carbon atom. That’s a journey in scale from millimeters to picometers.
To experience that journey, try out the interactive Cell Size and Scale application created by the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center. It is a tool of elegant simplicity. Move the single slider to the right and sets of increasingly tinier biological objects come into view. At micron scale, you’ll encounter the E. Coli bacterium with its friends lysosome and mitochondria. A gang of viruses make their appearance. And you’re only halfway to the atom.
