Help & Guide

Everything you need tomaster NanoCell

A friendly walkthrough for new users — how to run your first experiment, what every tool does, real-world ways to use the studio, and answers to common questions.

Getting started

Run your first experiment in four steps

No setup required. Follow these steps and you will have a recorded, analyzed experiment in minutes.

01

Pick a cell & layers

Choose a neuron, epithelial or plant cell from the top tabs. Open the Layers panel to toggle organelle systems on or off so you can focus on exactly what you want to study.

02

Set the conditions

Use the Simulate panel to dial in pH, temperature, organelle motility and genetic switches. The cell responds live, so every change is instantly visible.

03

Run & record

Press Play (or the spacebar) to start the real-time physics engine. Record a run from the timeline so you can replay, scrub and analyze it later.

04

Analyze, explain & share

Open Analyze for live charts, save the run in Experiments, ask the AI to explain it, then export a PDF report or share a read-only link with your lab.

Tools reference

What every panel does

Each tool lives in a tab inside the studio. Here is what you can do with each one.

Layers

Show or hide each organelle system — membrane, cytoskeleton, nucleus, mitochondria and more. Great for isolating one structure at a time.

Simulate

Control the cellular environment: pH, temperature, organelle motility and gene toggles. Watch Brownian motion speed up or slow down as you adjust.

Stimulus

Schedule timed events — heat shock, cold stress, acid wash, pH oscillation. Start from a ready-made protocol template or build your own timeline.

Measure

Measure distances, areas and organelle velocities at nanometer precision by clicking in the 3D scene, then export every reading as CSV or JSON.

Inspector

Turn on inspect mode (press I) and click any organelle to reveal its size, live speed, key roles and a did-you-know fact — biology on demand.

Analyze

Real-time and historical charts: activity over time, per-organelle behavior, speed distribution histograms and summary statistics.

Experiments

Save recordings to your personal library, annotate key moments, generate a polished PDF report or ask the built-in AI to explain the results.

Compare

Put two saved experiments side by side to see how changing one condition shifted organelle speed, particle counts and the overall environment.

Sweep

Automate a multi-step experiment across a range of temperature, pH or motility and chart exactly how cell dynamics respond to each value.

Scenarios

Save the full studio state — cell type, parameters, layers and quality — as a named scenario you can reload in one click or export to share.

Use cases

Ways people use NanoCell

From the classroom to the research bench — here are proven workflows to get you started.

Classroom & teaching

Bring cell biology to life for students. Toggle layers to explain structure, then run a stimulus to show how a cell reacts to its environment in real time.

  • 1Select a cell and hide every layer except the one you are teaching.
  • 2Turn on the Inspector and click organelles to surface their roles and scale.
  • 3Load a stimulus template (e.g. Heat Shock) and press Play to demonstrate a live response.

Research & experimentation

Design controlled experiments, capture the data, and quantify how organelle dynamics change under different conditions — all reproducible.

  • 1Set a baseline in Simulate, record a run, and save it as an experiment.
  • 2Use Sweep to test a parameter across a range and chart the trend.
  • 3Open Compare to quantify the delta between two conditions side by side.

Presentations & sharing

Turn findings into shareable artifacts. Annotate the moments that matter and hand your audience a link or a clean report they can open anywhere.

  • 1Record the experiment and add annotations at key frames.
  • 2Export a PDF report or generate a read-only public share link.
  • 3Capture a PNG snapshot of the 3D scene for slides and handouts.

Self-guided learning

New to cells? Explore at your own pace and let the AI translate the science into plain language whenever you get curious about a result.

  • 1Take the guided tour, then freely rotate, zoom and inspect the cell.
  • 2Change one condition at a time and watch what happens.
  • 3Save a run and hit Explain to get an AI walkthrough of the biology.

Controls

Shortcuts & navigation

Move faster with the keyboard, and control the 3D view with your mouse.

Keyboard shortcuts

Play / pause the simulation
Space
Switch to Neuron
1
Switch to Epithelial
2
Switch to Plant cell
3
Reset the camera view
R
Toggle the organelle inspector
I
Open keyboard shortcuts
?

Navigating the 3D view

  • Drag to rotate the cell in 3D.
  • Scroll to zoom in and out.
  • Right-drag to pan the view.
  • Click an organelle in inspect mode to learn about it.

Tip: inside the studio, take the guided tour any time from the graduation-cap button, or press ? for shortcuts.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

No — you can launch the studio and explore, run and record experiments right away. Creating a free account lets you save experiments to a personal library, share links and keep your work across sessions.

Every structure is rendered to a true 1 nm scale, from the plasma membrane down to individual ribosomes. Measurements you take in the studio are reported in real nanometer units.

It is a live simulation. A physics engine drives Brownian organelle motion, and it reacts to the pH, temperature and motility values you set — so changing a condition genuinely changes the dynamics.

Open the Measure panel, choose distance, area or velocity, then click points in the 3D scene. Readings appear in the list and can be exported as CSV or JSON.

Save a run in the Experiments panel and press Explain. The built-in assistant reads your parameters and statistics and describes, in plain language, what happened and why it matters.

Yes. Generate a read-only public share link from a saved experiment, or export a PDF report. Anyone with the link can view the summary without signing in.

Ready to put this into practice?

Open the studio and run your first experiment now — everything you just read is one click away.