Zebrafish embryo
Annie Cavanagh and David McCarthy
Scanning electron micrograph of a four-day-old zebrafish embryo. To capture this image, the zebrafish was physically attached to a stub (specimen holder) by its tail and tilted to 65 degrees. As zebrafish embryos are approximately 1 cm in length, making the whole embryo too big to be captured in a single image, three separate images had to be taken along its length and then stitched together digitally. Colour was then added to the black-and-white image using tones and shading to try and represent the reflectiveness of fish scales. The zebrafish is a small, tropical, freshwater fish that originally comes from Asia. It is commonly used as a model organism to study developmental biology and neurodegeneration (the deterioration or death of nerve cells) in vertebrates.
Wiring of the human brain
Zeynep M Saygin
Bird's-eye view of nerve fibres in a normal, healthy adult human brain. The back of the brain is on the left of the image and the left side of the brain is at the top of the image. Brain cells communicate with each other through these nerve fibres, which have been visualised by diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI MRI). Diffusion-weighted imaging is a specialised type of MRI scan; here it is measuring the movement of water in many directions in order to reconstruct the orientation of the nerve fibres. As this is a 3D image the direction of the nerve fibres has been colour-coded. Fibres travelling up and down (between the top of the head and neck) are coloured blue, fibres travelling forwards and backwards (between the face and back of the head) are coloured green, and fibres travelling left and right (between the ears) are coloured red. These patterns of connectivity in the brain are being used to better understand brain function and how this changes in people as they develop or in those with dyslexia. This image appears as a result of our MIT partnership.
Plant reproductive parts
Stefan Eberhard
Scanning electron micrograph of part of a thale cress flower, showing the male and female reproductive organs. The female part of the flower, the pistil (the blue feathery structure on an olive green stalk), is at the centre of the image and contains egg cells (ovules) housed in an ovary. It is surrounded by the male parts, the stamens, which have their anthers coloured light green and their filaments brown. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal (the light green/yellow spherical structures, for example in the anther in the top-left of the image). The pollen grains contain the male sperm cells. After an egg cell is fertilised by a sperm cell it develops into a seed. The petals are coloured purple. Thale cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana, was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced, and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology research. The width of the image is 1200 micrometres (1.2 mm).
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