order + chaos

My pretties today:

These are the low grade osteosarcoma cells I've been nurturing for a month now. This image shows how slowly they grow, since the flask I first plated them in is not even confluent yet after almost 30 days. This small cluster is representative of SAOS-2 growth over a month, which is super slow, but also very organized. I haven't actually seen cells organize themselves so well before and it's interesting because one of the challenges of growing muscle tissue is that the cells don't grow in any organized fashion (as in, all in the same direction). This small cluster isn't the best example I have of the cell organization of SAOS-2s. The below photo, that I took with my iPhone through the microscope lens, is a much better example of their tendency to self-organize.
*By the way, that text bit is my handwriting that I made into a font, here. 

This lovely moon-like image shows a larger cluster of cells than the one above--much larger. The dark, fuzzy spot on the right side is an out-of-focus air bubble on the surface of the media (the cells form their layer on the bottom of the flask). You can clearly see how the cells have organized themselves to grow fairly smoothly, all in the same direction. They are so astoundingly beautiful to me. The rounded cells are in mitosis. They do seem to be picking up the pace of cell division and growth a little more now that they have a colony formed. I wish that there was a way I could push them to grow faster, because I prefer the SAOS-2s to the U-2 OSs. Why? The U-2 OS cells grow extremely chaotically (no organization at all, it seems) and are rather monstrous. They are growing in clumps on the weavings, and don't seem to want to flatten and adhere properly to the fibres. I suspect these SAOS cells would do a much better job, but I won't be able to find out until they've become confluent (abundant) enough for me to trypsinize them and try it out. I've been waiting. One must practice excruciating patience in working with live cells. Below is an image of the state of the weavings now with the U-2 OS cells growing on them.

It's extremely difficult, with the digital imaging microscope I'm currently using, to get a clear focus on the cells on weavings, because it's 3-dimensional and there are many depths of field. This image shows the weaving right after I re-seeded it with another flush of cells, so the floating ones are the out of focus ones, while the growing colonies are better in focus at the edges of the fibres. This growth is drastically different from the 3T3 connective tissue growth on my weavings at SymbioticA. The connective tissue actually did what is in its nature to do: connect things. These cancer cells shown above are unruly as hell. I can't imagine how they form a matrix! Time will tell.

My son (like probably all of humanity) has ascribed the human moral value of evil to these osteosarcoma cells. He says they're creepy. He describes that they are selfish and lazy, that they do not work within a system but their only purpose is to reproduce. I can't see them this way when working with them in vitro. I can't imagine them as evil or any other human value--I can only see them as vibrant microorganisms. They can't harm anyone in the dish and they can't disrupt a system because there isn't one to disrupt. How interesting then, between the two types, the one has seemingly established its own order while one is the very embodiment of chaos. Think of cancer as an organized force, and then think of it as a meandering chaos with no conscious will (it is both, depending on the type). Is cancer actually cancer outside of a human body or does it depend on a human context, with a system to disrupt, to be what we consider 'cancer'. If there is no imposed order to follow, is it still deviant?

PS - I threw out the contact lenses today. Nothing would grow on them. Dan warned me that cells may not like them, because they aren't firm enough. I guess cells need the opposing pressure of our eyeballs to the contact lenses to find an environment they enjoy.