The shavings were then immunostained bathed in a special reagent that would mark the presence of abnormal proteins with a bright, telltale red or brown stain on the surface of the tissue.

NEWYORKER: Offensive Play

In one case, a man who had been a linebacker for sixteen years, you could see, without the aid of magnification, that there was trouble: there was a shiny tan layer of scar tissue, right on the surface of the frontal lobe, where the brain had repeatedly slammed into the skull.

NEWYORKER: Offensive Play

"Essentially we know the ZIP code of vessels within a certain tissue, we can program the address on the surface of the cell, " he said.

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It sounds like you're describing tonsillar stones (also called tonsilloliths), which are clumps of food particles, mucus, dead tissue cells and more that can collect in the crypts found on the surface of the tonsils.

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And its purity and large surface area make it suitable for medical uses too: from aiding drug delivery to building new tissue for regenerative medicine.

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