This three-part activity consists of three lessons that explore the Cell Feature Explorer (CFE), an open access tool that allows users to view over 200,000 real stem cell images in three dimensions and sort by cell structure of interest.  

In lesson 1, students are introduced to this tool within the context of mitosis and are asked to create their own cell gallery of example cell images representing the different stages of mitosis. This lesson is also available as a stand-alone resource.  

In lessons 2 and 3, students are challenged to design their own experiment that can be done using the data available within the CFE. Students use excel to quantitatively analyze trends in cell structures within the dataset and share their findings in a scientific figure.  

learning objectives

• Define human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) ‍
• Describe how fluorescent microscopy images are collected and processed at the Allen Institute for Cell Science
• ‍Observe images of cells undergoing mitosis using the Cell Feature Explorer  ‍
• Interpret cell images to classify them by cell cycle stage ‍
• Interpret scatterplots and bar graphs in terms of the relationship between an independent and dependent variable ‍
• Create scatterplots in the Cell Feature Explorer and bar graphs in Excel to investigate the relationship between two variables ‍
• Develop a question and hypothesis related to mitosis that can be investigated with the Cell Feature Explorer data ‍
• Analyze data from the Cell Feature Explorer dataset to investigate a question related to mitosis  ‍
• Interpret results in terms of cell cycle knowledge