Question: what was your favourite cell discovery ?

Rob Stanley answered on 21 Jun 2016:

I haven’t discovered anything particularly important myself unfortunately!

I guess my favourite discovery (by someone else) related to the cell was understanding how the parts of our cells interact to send messages. In every cell we have hundreds of different types of proteins (the same sort of things as the protein in food, but engineered by the cell to be of a particular use). Proteins are complicated 3D shapes, on the outside of which they have special “domains” that are able to recognise other proteins (and other things in your body). They can bind together on the domains and so make even more complicated structures capable of doing all sorts of things.