What’s the Greatest Cell? Scientists Select Their Favorites

From neurons to immune cells to trophoblasts, scientists reveal their favorite cells.

Whether it’s counting red blood cells under a light microscope or recording bursts of electricity as neurons fire, scientists spend a lot of time studying cells. With such a diversity in form and function, cells vary considerably across the tree of life, so the editors at The Scientist were curious to find out which cells researchers liked the most and why.

Neurons Electrify the Senses

Jessica Bernard, cognitive neuroscientist, Texas A&M University

I love Purkinje cells. They’re so fascinating! They’re these beautiful cells that integrate and process so much information as the cerebellum gets feedback from the body and environment as well as input from the cortex. They’re the best! I actually almost thought about getting one tattooed on me, but I’m not there yet. I’m a little afraid of needles.

Gilles Martin, neurobiologist and electrophysiologist, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

I worked on medium spiny neurons for 20 years, so I definitely have something for this neuronal population. I’m an electrophysiologist, and each time I record these neurons, there’s something profoundly beautiful about the way they respond, electrically speaking. You see these beautiful action potentials. I’m really a sucker for the cells. I guess I was born to become an electrophysiologist because I remember that I was hooked on the first day. It’s been my passion since my second year in college to become an electrophysiologist and to understand how neurons really work—how they process and integrate synaptic information.

The Intrigue of Immune Cells

Shirley Jiang, clinical allergist and immunologist, Stanford University

It’s got to be an eosinophil or a mast cell. Those are the most important cells in the context of allergies, and oftentimes our patients have problems with them. A lot of our treatments target those cells.

Andrew Shepherd, neuroimmunologist, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Not even close—it’s macrophages by a mile! In my PhD, I started working on these cells and their association with the nervous system. Everywhere you look, there is some form of macrophage, and they’re absolutely vital to everything that we do. They communicate with the nervous system in ways that we’re really only just beginning to understand. One of the things that’s really interesting about macrophages is that they are such a wide-ranging cell type in terms of their phenotype and function. They can be the good guys in many ways, and getting rid of macrophages in the wrong context is a very bad idea, such as in the context of nerve damage and recovery from nerve injury. But they can also, of course, be the bad guys, so depleting the right types of macrophages at the right time could definitely be a therapeutic target as well. And there again, we’re really only just scratching the surface.

Holden Maecker, cellular immunologist, Stanford University

My favorite cell is a T cell because I’ve been working on them my whole career. They are the cells that provide specific immunity to cellular based pathogens, so they’re pretty important and pretty cool cells.

Life-giving Cells and Transient Cell States

Janet Rossant, stem cell and developmental biologist, The Hospital for Sick Children

Oh, that’s easy: the trophoblast! Without trophoblasts, the embryo can’t implant. It can’t develop. It can’t make a placenta. And, it’s the first cell type to differentiate in the blastocyst.

Travis Lee, plant biologist, Salk Institute for Biological Sciences

I’d say my favorite cell is a hypoxic cell. My past research focused on low oxygen, or hypoxia, and what we’re now seeing in single-cell data is that hypoxia can arise endogenously, or it can be a kind of developmental hypoxia tied to what the cell is doing at that stage or where it’s located. Hypoxia seems to act more like a cell state layered above or below a cell type. It doesn’t define the cell itself, but it captures what the cell is experiencing in the moment. In my data, anecdotally for example, we see many hypoxic cells scattered spatially in ways that may look random to us by eye but are actually very specific to the cell’s function.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.