• Question: What causes cells to change appearance and colour and why and how are the cells chloroplasts and nuclei affected?

    Asked by msraphaelamay to Alexis, Dr D, Helen, Jasmine, Mario on 19 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Jasmine Penny

      Jasmine Penny answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      I don’t really know a lot about chloroplasts – I haven’t really studied plant biology since I was at school. I do know that many things can cause a cell to change appearance. In fact all cells in your body come from one cell, which is called a stem cell. This cell divides to produce what we call daughter cells. These cells get messages from the surrounding environment which tell it what cell it needs to change into!

      Also, cells change their appearance in response to stress. When I grow my cells in the lab they behave in a different way to how they would in the body, which is why I am trying to get them back to how they would behave in the body.

    • Photo: Mario Ruiz

      Mario Ruiz answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      During their life, cells change appearance mainly because they need to divide. If they normally look stretched and flat, for division they adopt a rounded ball-shape so they can properly ‘be cut’ into two halves. Nuclei needs to be ready for this process, and the genetic information stored in the DNA need to be duplicated, so each of the two forming daughter cells must receive the same amount of information. All the components of the cell needs to be duplicated as well, and this includes chloroplasts in plant cells.

      About the colour, most of the images you can see in magazines or the internet are from special molecules (fluorophores) that we add to the cells in the lab so they can be seen under the microscope. Altough in the case of the plant cells on leaves, for example, the green colour comes from chlorophyll, which is a molecule inside the chloroplasts.

    • Photo: Andrew Devitt

      Andrew Devitt answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      @msraphaelamay

      Cells can be different colours depending on the pigments they have and the balance of them. You only need to see the colour change in leaves in autumn!

      But artificially coloured cells are beautiful. I use a dye called acridine orange to stain cells. DNA goes green and RNA goes red. You get some beautiful images. Check out my twitter account

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