Tag: Cool Images

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A Focus on Microscopes: See Eye-Catching Images

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Have you ever wondered what creates striking images of cells and other tiny structures? Most often, the answer is microscopes. Many of us have encountered basic light microscopes in science classes, but those are just one of many types that scientists use. Check out the slideshow to see images researchers have captured using different kinds of microscopes. For even more images of the microscopic world, visit the NIGMS Image and Video Gallery.

Visualizing Structures

Type of Microscope: Dark field
Used to Study: Living and dead cells

Oblong bacteria glowing blue on a black background.
Anthrax bacteria being killed by an agent that naturally glows blue when excited by ultraviolet light in the microscope.
Credit: Keiler Lab, Penn State University.

Type of Microscope: Time lapse
Used to Study: Living cells as they move over time

Cell-like compartments spontaneously emerge from scrambled frog eggs, with nuclei (blue) from frog sperm. Endoplasmic reticulum (red) and microtubules (green) are also visible.
A dividing cell of an African globe lily. This is one frame of a time-lapse sequence that shows cell division in progress.
Credit: Andrew S. Bajer, University of Oregon, Eugene.

Type of Microscope: Super resolution light
Used to Study: Activity in living cells

Oblong blue structures with red threads connected to them on the left and right.
DNA (blue) being pulled apart by microtubules (red) as a cell divides. The blue and red colors are due to the fluorescent label used to dye the sample.
Credit: Jane Stout and Claire Walczak, Indiana University.

Type of Microscope: Fluorescent light
Used to Study: Activity in dyed cells and molecules

Many spots and swirls of fluorescent green and purple.
Kidney tissue stained with fluorescent dyes that glow under high intensity light from the microscope.
Credit: Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, NCMIR.

Type of Microscope: Confocal
Used to Study: 3D images of living cells

Round green-yellow structures with red edges and blue dots in their centers.
Cell-like compartments that spontaneously emerge from scrambled frog eggs, with nuclei (blue) from frog sperm.
Credit: Xianrui Cheng, Stanford University School of Medicine. Xianrui Cheng, James E. Ferrell Jr. SCIENCE 366: 631, 01 Nov 2019 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7793).

Type of Microscope: Electron
Used to Study: Dead cells

A circle containing many types of structures an inner circle that is clear.
Cross-section through the worm, C. elegans, revealing various internal structures frozen in time. This image was taken with transmission electron microscopy and labeled afterwards with color to highlight features in the image.
Credit: Piali Sengupta, Brandeis University.

Type of Microscope: Cryo-EM
Used to Study: Cellular components, particles (viruses, molecules, ribosomes)

An oblong capsule made up of tiny gray, yellow, and red structures.
The protein shell, or capsid, that surrounds HIV and is covered in a host protein (red), which allows the virus to evade detection.
Credit: Juan R. Perilla, Klaus Schulten, and the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group.
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Cool Images: Wondrous Worms

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The tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is one of the most common research organisms—creatures scientists use to study life. While C. elegans may seem drastically different from humans, it shares many genes and molecular pathways with us. Viewed with a microscope, the worm can also be surprisingly beautiful. Aside from the stunning imagery, these examples from our Image and Video Gallery show how C. elegans helps scientists advance our understanding of living systems and find new ways to improve our health.

Round yellow shapes with smaller blue spots. Three of the yellow shapes are connected by a purple line. Credit: Keir Balla and Emily Troemel, University of California San Diego.

This C. elegans has been infected with microsporidia (purple), parasites closely related to fungi. The yellow shapes are the worm’s gut cells, and the blue dots are nuclei. Some microsporidia can infect people, so studying the parasites in worms could help researchers devise strategies to prevent or treat infections.

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Cool Images: Bewitching Bacteria

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Some bacteria benefit us as part of our microbiome—the vast collection of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies—while others can make us sick. Whether helpful or dangerous, bacteria can appear colorful and striking under a microscope. These photos provide just a small peek into the incredible diversity of these microbes.

A green pattern resembling a flower on a red background. Credit: Liyang Xiong and Lev Tsimring, BioCircuits Institute, UCSD.

This floral pattern emerged when a researcher grew two strains of bacteria—Acinetobacter baylyi (red) and Escherichia coli (green)—together for 2 days in a petri dish. A. baylyi are found in soil and typically don’t pose a threat to humans, although some strains can cause infections. E. coli normally live in the intestines of people and animals. Most strains are harmless, but some can cause food poisoning or other illnesses.

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Vibrant Science Backgrounds for Your Video Calls

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Whether you’re teaching remotely, attending classes virtually, or just participating in online meetings, video calls have likely become part of your daily life. Eye-catching backgrounds can be a great way to add some fun to these calls and help protect your privacy. NIGMS has a collection of biology-themed backgrounds for use with video-call software such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

All of these backgrounds are scientific images from the NIGMS Image and Video Gallery, which contains even more options for you to download and use.

A mosaic of round blue shapes and fuzzy green, purple, orange, and pink shapes. Cells lining a mouse’s airway. Download
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Cool Images: Animal Development in Progress

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Wildlife photos can be truly stunning, and cute cat pictures are a cornerstone of the internet. But zooming in on the early lives of fish, insects, and worms can have equally wonderful results. Using powerful microscopes, researchers are revealing the complexity and beauty of animal development.

A spiral of orange and red cells. Credit: James E. Hayden, The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, PA.

This image captures the spiral-shaped ovary of an anglerfish in cross section. Once matured, these eggs will be released in a gelatinous, floating mass. For some species of anglerfish, this egg mass can be up to 3 feet long and include nearly 200,000 eggs.

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Cool Images: The Hidden Beauty Inside Plants

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Spring brings with it a wide array of beautiful flowers, but the interior structures of plants can be just as stunning. Using powerful microscopes, researchers can peek into the many molecular bits and pieces that make up plants. Check out these cool plant images from our Image and Video Gallery that NIGMS-funded scientists created while doing their research.

Several round structures that are yellow at the center and pink and purple around the edges and have honeycomb-like interiors. Credit: Arun Sampathkumar and Elliot Meyerowitz, California Institute of Technology.

In plants and animals, stem cells can transform into a variety of different cell types. The stem cells at the growing tip of this Arabidopsis plant will soon become flowers. Cellular and molecular biologists frequently study Arabidopsis because it grows rapidly (its entire life cycle is only 6 weeks), produces lots of seeds, and has a genome that’s easy to manipulate.

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Cool Images: A Colorful—and Halloween-Inspired—Collection

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Transformations aren’t just for people or pets around Halloween. Scientific images also can look different than you might expect, depending on how they’re photographed. Check out these tricky-looking images and learn more about the science behind them.

A human fibroblast cell dividing. A tan-colored area surrounds the cell that contains two magenta-colored centers. Green dots line the area where the cell is dividing. Credit: Nilay Taneja, Vanderbilt University, and Dylan T. Burnette, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Do you have a hunch about what this image is? Perhaps something to do with dry leaves? It’s a human fibroblast cell undergoing cell division, or cytokinesis, into two daughter cells. Cytokinesis is essential for the growth and development of new cells. And fibroblasts play a big role in wound healing by helping with contraction and closure.

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Molecular Fireworks: How Microtubules Form Inside Cells

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A video depicting red strands of various lengths exploding outward from a focal point at the left. The strands are tipped in neon green.
       Microtubules sprout from one another. Credit: Petry lab, Princeton University.

The red spray pictured here may look like fireworks erupting across the night sky on July 4th, but it’s actually a rare glimpse of tiny protein strands called microtubules sprouting and growing from one another in a lab. Microtubules are the largest of the molecules that form a cell’s skeleton. When a cell divides, microtubules help ensure that each daughter cell has a complete set of genetic information from the parent. They also help organize the cell’s interior and even act as miniature highways for certain proteins to travel along.

As their name suggests, microtubules are hollow tubes made of building blocks called tubulins. Scientists know that a protein called XMAP215 adds tubulin proteins to the ends of microtubules to make them grow, but until recently, the way that a new microtubule starts forming remained a mystery.

Sabine Petry Link to external web site and her colleagues at Princeton University developed a new imaging method for watching microtubules as they develop and found an important clue to the mystery. They adapted a technique called total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, which lit up only a tiny sliver of a sample from frog egg (Xenopus) tissue. This allowed the scientists to focus clearly on a few of the thousands of microtubules in a normal cell. They could then see what happened when they added certain proteins to the sample.

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CLAMP Helps Lung Cells Pull Together

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ALT TEXTCells covered with cilia (red strands) on the surface of frog embryos. Credit: The Mitchell Lab.

The outermost cells that line blood vessels, lungs, and other organs also act like guards, alert and ready to thwart pathogens, toxins, and other invaders that can do us harm. Called epithelial cells, they don’t just lie passively in place. Instead, they communicate with each other and organize their internal structures in a single direction, like a precisely drilled platoon of soldiers lining up together and facing the same way.

Lining up this way is crucial during early development, when tissues and organs are forming and settling into their final positions in the developing body. In fact, failure to line up in the correct way is linked to numerous birth defects. In the lungs, for instance, epithelial cells’ ability to synchronize with one another is important since these cells have special responsibilities such as carrying mucus up and out of lung tissue. When these cells can’t coordinate their functions, disease results.

Some lung epithelial cells are covered in many tiny, hair-like structures called cilia. All the cilia on lung epithelial cells must move uniformly in a tightly choreographed way to be effective in their mucus-clearing job. This is a unique example of a process called planar cell polarity (PCP) that occurs in cells throughout the body. Researchers are seeking to identify the signals cells use to implement PCP. Continue reading “CLAMP Helps Lung Cells Pull Together”