Resources: open models, images and courses
Hand-picked places to find open cell models, illustrations, textbooks and communities. Links go to external sites; check each site's own terms before reusing anything.
27 resources
3D models
NIH 3D
The US National Institutes of Health 3D print and model exchange, with cells, organelles, viruses and protein structures.
Sketchfab: Cell models
Community-uploaded 3D cell models you can orbit in the browser. Check each model's own terms before reusing it.
PDB-101: Molecular Landscapes (David Goodsell)
Watercolour paintings of the crowded inside of cells, showing how molecules really pack together.
Images & icons
NIAID BioArt
Free science illustrations of cells, microbes and lab equipment, ready to drop into slides and posters.
Servier Medical Art
Thousands of editable medical and biology vector graphics, including cells and tissues.
Bioicons
A searchable library of life-science SVG icons (cells, organelles, lab tools) collected from open sources.
Wikimedia Commons: Cell biology
Diagrams, micrographs and animations of cells. Each file lists its own author and reuse terms.
Cell Image Library
A curated archive of real microscopy images, videos and animations of cells from many organisms.
Courses & textbooks
OpenStax: Biology 2e
A free peer-reviewed college biology textbook. Chapters 3 and 4 cover cell structure and function.
LibreTexts Biology
A large collection of open textbooks and course notes on cell biology and related fields.
Khan Academy: Structure of a cell
Short videos and practice questions on prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and their organelles.
iBiology
Free talks by leading researchers on cell biology, microscopy and how discoveries are made.
中国大学 MOOC：细胞生物学
Chinese-language university cell biology courses on the MOOC platform, offered by several universities.
哔哩哔哩：细胞生物学课程
Chinese-language cell biology lectures and animations shared on Bilibili.
Atlases & databases
Human Protein Atlas: Subcellular
Fluorescence images showing where thousands of human proteins sit inside cells.
Allen Cell Explorer
3D live-cell images and integrated models of human stem cells and their organelles.
Cell Ontology (CL)
A controlled vocabulary that names and relates cell types across species, used by many databases.
CZ CELLxGENE Discover
Explore single-cell RNA datasets in the browser to see which cell types express which genes.
Human Cell Atlas
An international effort to map every cell type in the human body.
BioNumbers
A database of measured biological quantities, such as cell sizes, organelle counts and growth rates.
Open-source code
GitHub: duerrsimon/bioicons
Source repository of the Bioicons library, with every SVG and its credit information.
GitHub: obophenotype/cell-ontology
Development repository of the Cell Ontology. Open issues to suggest new cell types.
GitHub: mrdoob/three.js
The 3D library behind this site's procedural cell models. Its examples show how to build custom geometry.
Communities
Biology Stack Exchange
Question-and-answer site where biologists and students discuss cell and molecular biology.
Image.sc Forum
Community forum for scientific image analysis, covering Fiji, CellProfiler, napari and microscopy workflows.
r/microscopy
Hobbyists and professionals sharing micrographs of cells and tissues.
知乎：细胞生物学话题
Chinese-language Q&A and articles about cell biology.