If you slip on a virtual reality headset to play the Allen Institute for Cell Science’s latest app, you’ll find yourself inside a simulated, circular room with targets on the walls all around you. Several 3D, watermelon-sized human cells fall from the sky and land at your feet, jostling gently to find their place on the ground.
In the VR game, users learn the different stages of cell division, or mitosis, by picking up the cells and pitching them at the correctly labeled target on the wall.
In mitosis, cells go through visually distinct stages as they carry out the complicated steps of turning one cell into two daughter cells. The goal of the game is to find and sort five different stages in the pile of cells at your feet by tossing them at the right targets as a virtual clock ticks on the wall.
