Inside each of our bodies live an "army of serial killers" that has the potential to destroy unwanted materials.
These assassins go by the name of cytotoxic T cells and new timelapse footage shows the utterly ruthless nature of these cells when it comes across cancer within the body.
The video, published as part of a study in the journal Immunity, shows a series of green or orange blobs denoting the killer T cells furiously devouring bright blue blobs that represent cancer cells.
The research was led by Prof. Gillian Griffiths, director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, who said that the primary function of the T cells is "to kill again and again."
Not only does the footage reveal the dramatic sci-fiesque drama taking place at the cellular level, it also shows off just how accurate these killer cells, which belong to the while blood cell group, actually are.
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Like any assassin -- think about the ones you've seen in films unless of course you happen to know one personally -- the T cells move through the intercellular space scouting for cells that don't belong in the body.
Once it happens upon another cell, the T cell uses its membrane, the outer part of the cell, to find out whether this other cell needs to be killed.
In the case of a cancer cell, the T cell figures yes, and releases poisonous proteins by puncturing the cancer cell.
Ruthless.