With some care, primarily feeding, the cells can live several months.

You cannot completely die because your cells will live on and on.

Even if only simple cells lived on that world, they had been beavering away for a long time to good purpose.

Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.

Primary cells do not live long in culture and are hard to establish.

But just because cells can live longer does not mean that an entire body can.

In this partnership the algal cells live inside the fungus tissue.

This is advantageous as the cells are still living after the extraction has taken place.

A few cells however are living and allow the passage of water through them.

"Henrietta's cells have now been living outside her body far longer than they ever lived inside it," Defler said.