Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
Thanks to the amazing dedication of our volunteer community, this project is now finished!
You can learn more about Etch A Cell and discover our new projects here
Welcome to Etch a Cell. Help us learn more about the structures that make up cells!
Learn moreZooniverse Talk
Chat with the research team and other volunteers!
Etch a Cell Statistics
View more statsKeep track of the progress you and your fellow volunteers have made on this project.
Every click counts! Join Etch a Cell's community to complete this project and help researchers produce important results. Click "View more stats" to see even more stats.
By the numbers
Message from the researcher
With your help, we can understand the tiny universe inside our cells
Etch a CellAbout Etch a Cell
In Etch a Cell we ask you to look at images of cells that were produced using an Electron Microscope. These microscopes use an electron beam to look at molecules, cells and tissues at a very high level of magnification.
A critical step after these structures have been imaged by an electron microscope is called “segmentation”; this is where someone draws around structures of interest in the image, like the cell membrane or mitochondria (the energy producing power-houses of your cells). For this project, we need you to help us segment the nucleus of a cell. This is the part of the cell that contains the DNA. Computers can help with segmentation, but they can be prone to error.
We hope that these projects will advance our ability to analyse biological structures using electron microscopy and segmentation. With enough volunteer help we may be able to train computers to segment automatically. This has huge potential to help us understand biology and study disease!