The Cells That Exist Between Life and Death

After death, some cells can enter what’s known as ‘the third state’ to create new life

Image Source: WikiCommons — The xenobot shown “is layered with heart muscle (now glowing red). AI determines the overall shape of the organism, as well as the location of its muscle, to produce forward movement.”

As much as our species has learned about ourselves, our world, and Life itself, some major mysteries remain. Perhaps no mystery is greater than death — not Space, the bottom of our oceans, or even the human mind. Everything alive will die; it is a fact. Yet we have little to no idea what, if anything, happens after death.

Still, we know enough to know that death and life are a cycle. Everything alive will die, but with death comes life. While any potential spiritual journey or afterlife remains unknown, scientists are studying the physical aspects of the cycle — and they’ve identified cells that exist somewhere between both.

The Curiosity

Our story begins with biologist Peter Nobel from the University of Washington and bioinformatics researcher Alex Pozhitkov from the City of Hope’s cancer center in California, who describe themselves as “researchers who investigate what happens within organisms after they die.”

While life and death’s cycle makes for great poetry, scientists typically consider death to be when an organism irreversibly ceases to function as a whole. In the grand scheme of things, death is indeed…