Biomedical Beat Blog – National Institute of General Medical Sciences
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This image shows the mouse optic nerve and retina. Credit: Keunyoung Kim, Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research , UC San Diego. In this image, the optic nerve (left) leaves the back of the retina (right). Where the retina meets the optic nerve, visual information begins its journey from …
Continue reading “Cool Image: Outsourcing Cellular Housekeeping”
The feeding tube, or pharynx, of a planarian worm with cilia shown in red and muscle fibers shown in green. Credit: Carrie Adler/Stowers Institute for Medical Research. This rainbow-hued image shows the isolated feeding tube, or pharynx, of a tiny freshwater flatworm called a planarian, with the hairlike cilia in red and muscle fibers in …
Continue reading “Cool Image: Researching Regeneration in a Model Organism”
Neurons activated with red or blue light using algae-derived opsins. Credit: Yasunobu Murata/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. The nerve cells, or neurons, lit up in blue and red in this image of mouse brain tissue are expressing algae-derived, light-sensitive proteins called opsins. To control neurons with light, scientists engineer the cells to produce …
Productive V. cholerae (yellow) and exploitive V. cholerae (red). Credit: Carey Nadell, Princeton University. What looks like an abstract oil painting is actually an image of several cholera-causing V. cholerae bacterial communities. These communities, called biofilms, include productive and exploitive microbial members. The industrious bacteria (yellow) tend to thrive in denser biofilms (top) while …
Viral RNA (red) in an RSV-infected cell. Credit: Eric Alonas and Philip Santangelo, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. What looks like a colorful pattern produced as light enters a kaleidoscope is an image of a cell infected with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) illuminated by a new imaging technology. Although relatively harmless in most children, …
Yeast cells deficient in zinc and the Tsa1 protein have protein tangles. Credit: Colin MacDiarmid and David Eide, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Just in time for the holidays, we’ve wrapped up a few red and green cellular images from basic research studies. In this snapshot, we see a group of yeast cells that are deficient in …
Master clock in mouse brain with the nuclei of the clock cells shown in blue and the VIP molecule shown in green. Credit: Cristina Mazuski in the lab of Erik Herzog, Washington University in St. Louis. Our biological clocks play a large part in influencing our sleep patterns, hormone levels, body temperature and appetite. A …
Credit: Phillip Klebba, Kansas State University. It looks like a fluorescent pill, but this image of an E. coli cell actually shows a new potential target in the fight against infectious diseases. The green highlights a protein called TonB, which is produced by many gram-negative bacteria, including those that cause typhoid fever, meningitis and dysentery. …
What looks like a bubbling lava lamp is actually part of an egg cell’s maturation process. In many animals, the egg cell develops alongside sister cells. These sister cells are called nurse cells in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), and their job is to “nurse” an immature egg cell, or oocyte. Toward the end of …
Cell biologists would love to shrink themselves down and actually see, touch and hear the inner workings of cells. Because that’s impossible, they have developed an ever-growing collection of microscopes to study cellular innards from the outside. Using these powerful tools, researchers can exhaustively inventory the molecular bits and pieces that make up cells, eavesdrop …
Continue reading “Cool Tools: Pushing the Limits of High-Resolution Microscopy”