Here comes snowman season… in your cells?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Our cells are like tiny cities, running on little factories called organelles. What does this cellular architecture look like?
Ask Amirrasoul Tavakoli and team at NIH, Bethesda.
They used a tool that freezes cells to capture their inner structures.
And? They found that cells use tiny fusion bridges to team up and reshape themselves. They discovered organelles clustering into snowman shapes, wrapped in scarf-like links.
These shapes may show how cells share energy and work. The scarf links help organelles team up to keep cells healthy.
Turns out, even organelles get into the holiday spirit. Just don’t eat the yellow snow.
Reference: Tavakoli, A., Hu, S., Ebrahim, S. et al. Hemifusomes and interacting proteolipid nanodroplets mediate multi-vesicular body formation. Nat Commun 16, 4609 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59887-9