Hour 12: Selena

Dear diary,

I opened my eyes to find her staring at me. 
‘How did you do that?’ she whispered in shock. 
‘Do what?’ I asked. 
‘How did you come out of senescence?’ she explained. 
I could’ve shot my-self. How could I have been this stupid? Normal cells cannot enter senescence and then just revert to an actively proliferating state! And there I was, having faked senescence, and then re-opened my eyes. Truth was, after the initial embarrassment, faking senescence had proved to be quite boring. Staying still, with my eyes closed...After a few minutes my mind had wandered off, and I had eventually forgotten I was meant to fake sleep. Hence, the eye opening. Way to blow my cover! I decided the only way to save myself was to act dumb:
‘I wasn’t senescing.’ I said avoiding her eyes. 
‘Yes you were! I saw you! You…You…’ Her whispers were getting louder. If I didn’t get the situation under control, she would soon attract the attention of neighbouring healthy cells. I looked up at her with an air of derision. 
‘I wasn’t senescing. Cells can’t senesce and then just magically come alive again’ I retorted confidently. It might have been the sudden eye contact or my tone, but suddenly a note of doubt appeared in her eyes. 
‘But…your eyes were closed.. You weren’t proliferating..I..’ 
I stopped her in her tracks: ‘My eyes weren’t closed. I was looking down. I thought I had seen a virus float by...or something. Plus I’m too young to proliferate.’ 
That seemed to do the trick. She closed her mouth and eyed me suspiciously. For a moment she didn’t say anything, staring at me so hard I felt as if she could see my thoughts. I had to force myself to keep eye contact, and, as a precaution, I decided to also think healthy thoughts. Just in case. 
She startled me when she broke the silence:‘You look different.’ It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. She clearly wasn’t giving up easily. 
‘I’m from a different tissue as you are’. I explained calmly. It was a white lie. I was different because I was cancer. So technically, I was a different tissue. 
‘Oh really?’ she asked airily ‘What’s your name?’. 
Finally a question I could answer. 
‘Cell X!’ I replied promptly. I realised my mistake when her face changed. Colour seemed to drain from her membrane, as terror filled her eyes. 
‘That’s not a cell’s name’ she muttered in a barely audible murmur. I felt my face mirror her own, as fear filled my gut. I concentrated on composing my face. Healthy cells grew in controlled ways: each cell had a specific function, a name according to which tissue it belonged in, a number. X wasn’t a number. At least not since human cells in the roman ages. X was a name they would give a cell when they lost count. Cell X was a name they would only assign to a cell that didn’t belong in a body. A tumor cell. 
‘I..’ My voice cracked and my mind reeled. Come on, think! I took a calming breath and faked shame.
 ‘I wasn’t assigned a name yet.’ The look of terror didn’t leave her eyes, as I urged on:‘I was only born a few hours ago and my tissue is quite disorganised. Most of us don’t have names yet!’ I let out a fake laugh. It sounded more like a cough. She just kept looking at me. 
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’ I soothed. ‘I just picked a random name until they assign me one’. I looked down.
 ‘It was stupid’. I mumbled under my breath. I waited, the only sound was the rythmic rumbling of our hosts heartbeat. After what seemed like an eternity, I noticed with the corner of my eye an oxygen molecule entering her membrane. She was finally breathing again. 
‘It’s ok.’ She said. Her forfeit was like honey. ‘I over-reacted. I guess…’ she looked away. ‘I guess you weren’t there. You... didn’t know’. Her last whisper was almost to her-self. 
I didn’t know? What was she talking about? I hesitate on probing her further for the moment, not after such a close call. I decided to instead distract her.
’So what’s your name?’ I asked, smiling encouragingly. 
‘Oh! I’m Cell ENA 15,3072,567.’ She replied with a proud smile. I gaped at her with my mouth hanging open. ‘But my friends call me Selena’. She concluded, winking. 
‘Selena. I like that.’ I stated, grinning. We looked at each other for another long moment, and then both turned back to our chores (you know, cell chores, making sure our signalling pathways are working fine, secreting the right molecules, ensuring the structure of the tissue we are holding is still intact. Boring stuff).

I still don’t know what she meant when she said ‘You weren’t there’. Or what the ENA in her cell name signifies. But if there is one thing I know, it’s that I will never forget her name. 

Cell X

Hour 11: Rules of good conduct

Dear diary,

Today I met a good cell. It wasn’t on purpose of course…There isn’t much space inside bodies, and we tend to be squished-up against all kinds of cells. Up to now, I’d been stuck against this old dormant cell, which wasn’t much company as she was…well…asleep all the time. But today the dynamics shifted slightly (I think our human host went jogging), and I ended up squished face first against its neighbour: a very young, healthy cell. I had encountered quite a few healthy cells in my few hours here, but there was something different about her: she hung there with such precision, that she seemed to glow in our darkness, making all its neighbouring cells look misplaced. Her plumpness was perfection, and I looked at her in awe, consumed by the knowledge that she had achieved her true purpose in life. I was astounded.

Unfortunately, my immediate response was to stare at her with my mouth dangling open for the most inappropriate amount of time (may I remind you of how awkward it is to have someone stare at you with their mouth open when your faces are glued together). Once I recovered some of my bearings, I promptly closed my mouth and tried to remember the ‘Rules of good conduct in case of contact with neighbouring cells’. You see, all cells need to communicate with one another in order for the whole organism to survive. Often, this is done through the secretion of small molecules, which is a far more effective than the whispering madness (you can see why in Hour 4: Chinese whispers). There are five main ways for us cells to communicate, and they differ mainly based on how far the cell you want to communicate with is. We can communicate to our-selves (intracrine signalling), as humans would when they think; we can talk-out loud to ourselves (autocrine signalling, never recommended as it makes you sound slightly mad); then we have a type of communication reserved to cells which are in direct contact (juxtacrine signalling), which humans use when patting their buddies on the back; we have a way to contact cells which are in our close proximity (paracrine signalling, humans just talk for that one); and finally, we have devised ways to make signals travel quite long distances (e.g. to spread hormones). This last one is called endocrine signalling, and is as good as using the internet and sending a message to another organ. Sorry, country. A cancer cell needs to be a master of communication if it wishes to survive. A tumor environment is often what determines the survival and thriving of a tumor. So when we are split, we are given a very important lecture on some basic ‘Rules of good conduct in case of contact with neighbouring cells’. Simple things really…like never show you are a tumor and generally be neighbourly, as you never know when healthy cells can come in handy (in the plan to take over the body, that is).  

Now that I was glued to this new cell, I hurriedly tried to remember the first rule. ’Rule 1: Never reveal your identity’. Ok. I could do that. I discretely looked down at my nucleous (the ‘organ’ that holds my DNA) and checked whether my chromatin was neatly disorganized. I had to make sure she wouldn’t be able to detect that I had genetic mutations that made me a cancer cell. Thinking back, she probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if my DNA had been neatly arranged in genes…It’s not like cells can sequence. And also, she probably wouldn’t have known what a cancer cell was until I told her. So all I had achieved was that she probably thought I had looked down to check out her nucleous. And I know this doesn't sound so bad to a human, but it's as if she caught me looking at her rack. I therefore hastily looked up, only to realise I was still stuck to her face. Of course, the sudden recalling of her proximity made all the other rules go down the drain. In my disdain I somehow concluded it would be appropriate for me to introduce myself. Ok. Introductions. What did the rules say about that? ‘Rule 2: It is considered neighborly to introduce one-self. To avoid suspicion, never reveal true names.’ Ok. Ok. Ok. I practiced different options in my head. ‘Hi, I’m X’. No. Sounded like I was her ex. ‘Hello, my name is cell X’. No. Too formal. I needed something cool… I know: ‘X. Cell X’. Yes! And a smile. Perfect. James Bond would be proud. With as much confidence as I could muster, I bravely sucked in an oxygen molecule and opened my mouth to whisper…and instead accidentally activated my signalling molecules. These are like text messages: once you send them, you cannot take them back. And of course I secreted proliferative signals…signals that told her to start dividing. I literally just told her I wanted to have her babies before I even uttered a word.

After that, I thought it was best to follow 'Rule 3:Always act like a healthy cell.’ And so I pretended to undergo sudden senescence and faked falling asleep. I know to her it might have looked more like a fainting than falling asleep, but I don’t care. After all, I’m not planning to ‘fake wake-up’ any time soon. Hopefully some immune cell will come and engulf me and put me out of my misery. Argh.

Cell X