Mar 19, 2015 12:08 AM
"A crucial difference between healthy cells and cancerous cells may be the presence of fractal patterns. This is according to new observations courtesy of researchers at Tufts University and Clarkson University, who have been examining the surfaces of cervical epithelial cells at nanoscale resolutions using atomic force microscopy.
These cancer fractals are a new, never-seen-before observation at single-cell resolutions, and their presence hardly seems to be a coincidence. They may even point the way toward a better, deeper understanding of what cancer even is: chaos. That is, cancer is the name given to a cell (and then tissue) that’s gone off the rails, in a sense, where its complex machinery has become unbalanced and, indeed, chaotic in a scientific sense.
Previous studies had already found traces of fractal patterns in the biochemistry and mechanics of cancerous tissue, but never before on the surfaces of single, isolated cancer cells. And this is where cancer really becomes cancer—on the surfaces of cells—as it drives metastasis, e.g. when cancer cells leave their primary tumor homes and travel elsewhere in the body to set up shop, forming secondary tumors.
Recall that a fractal is basically an endless pattern. As you zoom in on it, the pattern continues to repeat at every new scale. We can say that they are “infinitely complex,” the very signatures of chaos itself. And so fractals are everywhere in nature, from coastlines (famously) to seashells to tropical storms to the large-scale structure of the universe..."====http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/w...out-cancer
![[Image: fractal-background.jpg]](http://slodive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/white-black-backgrounds/fractal-background.jpg)
These cancer fractals are a new, never-seen-before observation at single-cell resolutions, and their presence hardly seems to be a coincidence. They may even point the way toward a better, deeper understanding of what cancer even is: chaos. That is, cancer is the name given to a cell (and then tissue) that’s gone off the rails, in a sense, where its complex machinery has become unbalanced and, indeed, chaotic in a scientific sense.
Previous studies had already found traces of fractal patterns in the biochemistry and mechanics of cancerous tissue, but never before on the surfaces of single, isolated cancer cells. And this is where cancer really becomes cancer—on the surfaces of cells—as it drives metastasis, e.g. when cancer cells leave their primary tumor homes and travel elsewhere in the body to set up shop, forming secondary tumors.
Recall that a fractal is basically an endless pattern. As you zoom in on it, the pattern continues to repeat at every new scale. We can say that they are “infinitely complex,” the very signatures of chaos itself. And so fractals are everywhere in nature, from coastlines (famously) to seashells to tropical storms to the large-scale structure of the universe..."====http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/w...out-cancer