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Podcast: The Future of Everything
Episode: Alex Dunn: When cells communicate by nudging one another
Description: New research explores how physical pushing and pulling between cells helps them differentiate into the myriad cell types in the body.
Have you ever pondered how the cells in your hand knew to become a hand and not, say, a foot or a heart or an ear? Alex Dunn is a chemical engineer who thinks about such things a lot. He has always marveled at the way — from brain to blood to bone — the many cells that make up our bodies derive from just a single cell created when sperm meets egg. He says that process of differentiation comes down to f...