Why is easy bruising so common in older adults? Most bruises form when small blood vessels (capillaries) near the skin's surface are broken by the impact of a blow or injury â often on the arms or legs. When this happens, blood leaks out of the vessels and initially appears as a black-and-blue mark. Eventually your body reabsorbs the blood, and the mark disappears.
HeLa cell. HeLa cell, a cancerous cell belonging to a strain continuously cultured since its isolation in 1951 from a patient suffering from cervical carcinoma. The designation HeLa is derived from the name of the patient, Henrietta Lacks.
But HeLa cells were the first -- the first line of human cells to survive in vitro (in a test tube). Named after a cancer patient, the cells were taken from Lacks' tissue samples and grown by a researcher named Dr. George Gey in 1951. Dr. Gey quickly realized that some of Lacks' cells were different from normal cells.