Skin deep science

I'm all about the science this week! Here you see a deepwell culture plate complete with one sample of artificial skin. It's an artificial membrane anchored onto a three-legged support, into which real living human skin cells have been placed. The cells have grown and grown, built up their own networks of collagen and elastin, whilst sucking their nutrients up from the pink culture medium that they're immersed in.

The final result is apparently almost identical to real living human skin. I'm going to be using this to determine how well certain drugs can penetrate into human skin, without having to resort to smearing drugs on my own arm. Bonus!