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Picture of the week

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23 June 2021 Bright blue oblong shape with white hairs on surface on black background.

Starlet sea anemone

Picture of the week, Science & Technology EMBL PhD student Anniek Stokkermans captured this side view of a Nematostella vectensis larva during this transition, using instrumentation in the Advanced Light Microscopy Facility at EMBL Heidelberg.

2021

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

8 June 2021 Purple, blue and yellow dots on a black background.

Dream team

Picture of the week, Science & Technology At EMBL, we have many dream teams – groups of individuals who support each other, innovate, and work together. One of those dream teams bridges two core facilities at EMBL Rome.

2021

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

27 April 2021 Microscope image of liver cells, highlighted in various colours.

Painting liver cells

Picture of the week, Science & Technology A page from a biologist’s colouring book? EMBL’s new interior wall design? Not quite – a bunch of liver cells, grown in the lab so that scientists can learn about fatty liver disease, or steatosis.

2021

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13 April 2021 EMBL Heidelberg's main building, the top of the façade lit up by sunlight.

Morning sun

Lab Matters, Picture of the week Throwback to June 2014: While EMBL Heidelberg’s main entrance is still in the dark, the well-known EMBL logo is already lit by the morning sun.

2021

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30 March 2021 A close-up photo of a shiny droplet of liquid that has been placed into one of the wells of a crystallisation plate.

Droplet beauty

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Scientists at EMBL Hamburg use droplets of protein solution to grow protein crystals. By exposing the crystals to X-rays, they are able to determine the protein’s molecular structure.

2021

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2 March 2021

Sleeping beauty

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Like caterpillars turning into beautiful butterflies, fruit fly larvae have to go through metamorphosis to finish their development. However, despite the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster being one of the best studied model organisms in biology, comparatively little attention has been given to this…

2021

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16 February 2021 An assembly of proteins in an enzyme, presented in a cartoon style.

Cellular modern art

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This week's Picture of the Week, which could also be a masterpiece of modern art, shows the enzyme RNA polymerase III, an assembly of 17 individual proteins combined into this complex structure.

2021

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9 February 2021 Crystal cubes seen through a microscope

Purity, beauty, and perfection

Picture of the week, Science & Technology The regular structures of crystals are a source of inspiration and fascination to us humans. While the crystals in this picture were not grown in nature, but instead by Petra Drncova from EMBL Grenoble, they share the same attributes as those found in nature.

2021

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26 January 2021 Two X-ray mirrors installed in the macromolecular crystallography beamline P14 at EMBL Hamburg. The mirrors are visible in the photo as dark rectangular crystal blocks, with two metal holders supporting the crystals in a stress-free position. The mirrors are inserted into a vacuum-compatible stainless steel vessel.

Mirror, mirror

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Scientists at EMBL Hamburg use specially designed mirrors to reflect and focus X-ray beams onto tiny crystals made of proteins or other biological molecules.

2021

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

19 January 2021 3D rendering of a human cell, attacked by a virus.

Cell under attack

Picture of the week, Science & Technology It’s almost a year since the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, affecting all our lives. While the virus continues its grip on the world, scientists are understanding it better and better, increasing our knowledge about it and opening up new ways to fight it.

2021

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22 December 2020

Cells in the holiday spirit

Picture of the week, Science & Technology It is that time of year to get into the holiday spirit, prepare for some time at home and relax after a strange and stressful year. Even the cells in our Picture of the Week are getting into the holiday spirit, forming this colourful Christmas tree.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

8 December 2020 Windowed façade reflecting leafless trees.

Clear views

Lab Matters, Picture of the week With the external scaffolding removed, another step in the construction of the EMBL Imaging Centre is complete. Now we get a first glimpse of the final look of this stunning building.

2020

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17 November 2020 Car parking rooftop with a solar power plant under construction on it.

Solar power

Lab Matters, Picture of the week Despite the cold autumn weather, workers are busy on the rooftop of the parking garage at EMBL Heidelberg. The 2176 m² rooftop is getting transformed into a combination of a green roof and a photovoltaic plant. The planted green roof will retain rainwater, while the solar panels – installed in…

2020

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27 October 2020 Microscopic image of a cell, nucleus visible in bright green, cell membrane stained with a purple dye against black background.

Party at the nucleus?

Picture of the week, Science & Technology The nucleus of this cell fluoresces in bright green thanks to GFP-labelled nucleoporin proteins. EMBL scientists use engineered nucleoporins as 3D reference standards to improve super-resolution microscopy.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

13 October 2020 Sea anemone polyp in side view showing two arms.

Crazy arms

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Sea anemones are amazing creatures. Despite their plant-like appearance and their tendency to remain fixed in one spot, they are actually animals.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

29 September 2020 A metal rack holding glass test tubes with yellow and red solutions in them.

Colourful test tubes

Picture of the week, Science & Technology To study the effect of commonly used drugs on bacterial envelopes, EMBL scientists applied a biochemical assay using a colour reaction. The deeper the red, the stronger the disruptive effect of the drug.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

11 August 2020 Different parts of a fruit fly arranged into an artificial green eye.

The eye of science

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This image is a composite of lateral pentascolopidial organs, a wing imaginal disc pouch, and an epithelial wound in a Drosophila larva. The organs are arranged here like eyelashes. Cells surrounding an epidermal wound appear as the iris and pupil of this artistic eye.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

4 August 2020 A long string of cells - red in the centre, yellow at the border.

Fish close-up

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This group of cells represents an interesting example of organ formation where cells simultaneously move and change their shapes in a highly coordinated manner.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

14 July 2020 The image shows a larva of Platynereis dumerilii, a marine worm. The body of the worm is shown in grey. Muscle strands are coloured in red. The muscles of one individual strand are highlighted in different, brighter colours.

Muscular worm larva

Picture of the week, Science & Technology The image shows a larva of Platynereis dumerilii, a marine worm. The image here was produced by Constantin Pape, a visiting predoctoral fellow in the Kreshuk group at EMBL Heidelberg.

2020

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7 July 2020 The rainbow pride flag hanging in front of the Advanced Training Centre at EMBL Heidelberg. Picture taken in summer 2020.

Pride at EMBL

Lab Matters, Picture of the week EMBL brings together more than 1700 people from all over the world, from a variety of academic and cultural backgrounds. This creates an environment in which there is constant exchange of both scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. While it seems obvious that EMBL, as an international…

2020

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16 June 2020 Composite image of fly larvae organs making up a flower

From fly to flower

Picture of the week, Science & Technology In this composite image, visual artist Mona Kakanj assembled three different biological structures in fly larvae into a flower. The original images were taken as part of a research project by Parisa Kakanj in Maria Leptin’s group.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

28 April 2020

Dancing chromosomes

Picture of the week, Science & Technology In human cells, the genetic material is packaged into 23 different DNA molecules, the chromosomes. Each chromosome is present in two copies, one inherited from the paternal sperm, and the other from the maternal egg. During most of the cell’s life, chromosomes take the shape of long,…

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

11 February 2020

Breathe in, breathe out

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This image shows the tracheal system of a live fruit fly larva. Daniel Rios from the Leptin Group and Dimitri Kromm from the Hufnagel Group used this advanced microscope to investigate the dynamics of tracheal cells during development.

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

31 December 2019

Tumour takeover

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. It is so deadly because tumours often return after successful cancer treatment. This recurrence is caused by individual dormant cancer cells remaining inside the breast. These cells can develop into active cancer cells…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

24 December 2019

Launching proteins

Picture of the week, Science & Technology What looks like a photo-series of an explosive eruption are actually uptaking proteins, captured by Markus Mund from the Ries Group at EMBL Heidelberg. The images were made in an attempt to learn how the different proteins that take up molecules into the cells via endocytosis – the cellular…

2019

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17 December 2019

Reshaping our DNA

Picture of the week, Science & Technology DNA is present in each cell of our body. If all the DNA from one human cell was removed and aligned in a single strand, it would in theory add up to a total length of about two metres. In order to fit into the nucleus of a cell, DNA has to be compressed by […]

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

10 December 2019

Birth of two HeLa stars

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This picture of the week, taken by Arina Rybina in the Ellenberg group at EMBL Heidelberg, shows a high-resolution 3D microscopy image of living human cells: HeLa cells. In this fascinating fluorescing microspace, two newly formed daughter nuclei are captured to study the assembly of nuclear pore…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

3 December 2019 Black and blue hexagon shapes with some yellow and red hot spots

Skin mosaic

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This beautiful mosaic of mostly hexagonal cells is the outer skin layer of a zebrafish larva as seen under a microscope. Each skin cell exhibits a unique pattern of actin ridges. Actin is a family of globular multifunctional proteins found in almost all eukaryotic cells. Actin forms microfilaments,…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

26 November 2019

EMBL makes insulin visible

Picture of the week, Science & Technology The hormone insulin helps to remove sugar from the blood after a meal. This is important, as in the long term high blood sugar levels damage our bodies. Diabetes of type 1 or type 2 is a direct consequence of a failure to produce sufficient insulin or to release it from the cells in which […]

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

19 November 2019

Formation of a brain

Picture of the week, Science & Technology The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. Yet despite it being the organ that makes us conscious beings – and despite the fact that researchers have been studying it for generations – it’s still a constant source of surprise. To help lift the veil on some of its mystery, Lina…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

5 November 2019

A mix of sensations

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Traditionally, we talk about having five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. In reality, our bodies are capable of much more. Sitting right under our skin are a variety of sensory neurons, which are specialised in detecting light touch, pain, temperature, itch or the body’s position.…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

29 October 2019

Inside out, and grub becomes fly

Picture of the week, Science & Technology The three bluish blobs shown in the top right corner of this image may not resemble the sphere of noodles that is the human brain, but they are still essential – at least for the fruit fly. This Picture of the Week shows the brain lobes of Drosophila. It’s an insect so tiny and so […]

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

22 October 2019

A perfect model

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Is it a fungus or a strange plant? Actually it’s the larval form of Platynereis – a group of marine ringed worms. Scientists have been using them in their studies for the past 70 years, and they are among the preferred lab organisms. They are easy to keep in the lab, and under temperature and…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

15 October 2019

Bringing life science to you

Lab Matters, Picture of the week EMBL not only produces excellent science and innovative technologies; it also shares its knowledge and experience with partners from around the world – and with the public. As well as offering teacher training in the European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences, science movie nights, and…

2019

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8 October 2019

The zebrafish earned its stripes

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Despite missing the characteristic stripes one would expect from a zebra – or a zebrafish – the fractals in this Picture of the Week show a zebrafish; or at least some cells in a zebrafish embryo, a few hours after fertilisation. Zebrafish are not only popular aquarium fish, they are also an…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

1 October 2019

The evolution of the eye

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Model organisms are species that are studied extensively to understand particular biological phenomena and processes, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. The small marine ringed worm Platynereis dumerilii gained…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

25 September 2019

A giant called dumpy

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Fruit flies have something that we don’t have: they produce a protein called dumpy. This protein is the largest created by insects, and is comparable in size to the largest human protein – titin. While titin is vital for our muscle function, dumpy connects the soft cells of the insect’s…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

17 September 2019

The end of a productive day

Lab Matters, Picture of the week It’s evening and the Sun is setting over the mountains surrounding the city of Grenoble – home to one of EMBL’s six sites – bathing the mountaintops in fiery red light. The Picture of the Week, taken by Zuzanna Kaczmarska shows the lab she worked in after a long and busy day. Bottles…

2019

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10 September 2019

Tracking the beginning of life

Picture of the week, Science & Technology All mammalian life starts with the fusion of egg and sperm, resulting in the creation of a single cell called a zygote. This develops into an embryo through a series of cell divisions, in which the number of cells doubles at each step. Todays’ Picture of the Week was taken by Manuel Eguren of the…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

3 September 2019

A robust allrounder

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This gorgeous image of a stained adult marine worm was created by former EMBL postdoc Hernando Martinez using structured microscopy. The worm itself was captured during plankton extraction off the coast of Sweden. There are over 10 000 species of these swimming worms, and they have adapted to every…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

27 August 2019

Where science meets art

Lab Matters, Picture of the week The most basic building blocks of life are the biological molecules in our cells. While these molecules are too small to see with most microscopes, they have incredibly complex and beautiful structures. Therefore, the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe), The Art Society CANTAB and The Art Society…

2019

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20 August 2019

When life takes shape

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Today’s picture of the week is not only a colourful one, it is also a snapshot of the vast number of shapes that the cells inside an animal body can adopt. How this variety comes about is investigated in the Leptin group at EMBL Heidelberg.  To understand the shapes of the cells in fruit fly…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

13 August 2019

Have fun, be protected

People & Perspectives, Picture of the week Working in a lab very often requires some kind of protection: gloves, safety goggles, lab coat, hearing protection. Sandra – now at BASF in Ludwigshafen – had fun getting ready for her work in the medicinal chemistry lab at EMBL! Here, she is about to grind potassium permanganate and copper…

2019

people-perspectivespicture-of-the-week

6 August 2019

The muscles that regulate blood pressure

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Low blood pressure (hypotension) or high blood pressure (hypertension) are risk factors for many diseases and affect more than 20% of the global population. How blood pressure is regulated is part of the research done in the Heppenstall group at EMBL Rome.  In today’s Picture of the…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

30 July 2019

Swiss day!

People & Perspectives, Picture of the week The 1700 people working at EMBL’s six sites come from more than 80 different countries. Many of them haven’t come straight from their home country to one of the EMBL sites but have also lived in other countries in between. While all of them are proud to work at EMBL they are also proud of…

2019

people-perspectivespicture-of-the-week

23 July 2019

Muscle games

Picture of the week, Science & Technology Every single moment of our life we use our muscles – most of the time without even thinking about it. Some muscles, like our heart, we cannot even control at all. How our brain communicates with our muscles is still not fully understood. The communication between our brain and our skeletal…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

16 July 2019

The birth of new cells – when two become four

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This colourful picture, taken by EMBL postdoc Arina Rybina using a confocal fluorescence microscope, shows human cells in the process of cell division. Eventually, each mother cell brings into existence two identical daughter cells. To visualise the process by light microscopy, different cell…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

9 July 2019

Working with a view

Lab Matters, Picture of the week EMBL has six sites in Europe and the newest is EMBL Barcelona. It opened in October 2017 and is still growing. Eventually, it will be home to eight research groups, all of them working to discover how tissues and organs function and develop. EMBL Barcelona is located in the Barcelona Biomedical…

2019

lab-matterspicture-of-the-week

2 July 2019

Cell duplication

Picture of the week, Science & Technology What looks like a pair of scary alien eyes is actually the final stage in the duplication of a cell. Cell duplication is preceded by a process called mitosis, in which the replicated chromosomes are separated into two new nuclei. Mitosis is the prerequisite for a cell to divide into two identical…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

25 June 2019

A colourful day at EMBL-EBI

Lab Matters, Picture of the week EMBL is an intergovernmental organisation, currently supported by 26 member states, one prospect and two associate member states. There are more than 1700 people working at EMBL, who come from more than 80 countries, creating a multicultural environment. EMBL also operates from six sites in Europe:…

2019

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18 June 2019

A no-brainer

Lab Matters, Picture of the week Have you ever wondered what reflex testing is about? Why does your doctor tap the space below your knee with a hammer to see if your leg kicks forward? At the centre of this involuntary reaction is the muscle spindle, of which you can see a close-up in today’s Picture of the Week. Muscle spindles…

2019

lab-matterspicture-of-the-week

11 June 2019

Rainbow lab

Lab Matters, Picture of the week Laboratories all over the world are often chaotic, a bit messy and look grey and unwelcoming. Not so in this lab, pictured by EMBL staff member Emily Savage. The differently coloured fluids, arranged in a row, bring vivid colours into the more subdued environment of the lab. The picture was taken…

2019

lab-matterspicture-of-the-week

4 June 2019

Colourful yeast

Lab Matters, Picture of the week Most of us love brewer’s yeast, or at least the food that it’s helped us to produce since ancient times. Without Saccharomyces cerevisiae (its Latin name) we couldn’t enjoy wine, beer or most types of bread. Besides its role in food production, S. cerevisiae is also an important model…

2019

lab-matterspicture-of-the-week

28 May 2019

A fiery end to a productive day

Lab Matters, Picture of the week EMBL’s sites provide spectacular views, such as this fiery sunset at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton. The campus, in the heart of the Cambridgeshire countryside, is home to several institutes and organisations working on genomics and computational biology. Among them is EMBL’s European…

2019

lab-matterspicture-of-the-week

21 May 2019

From fruit flies to cancer treatment

Picture of the week, Science & Technology This image – resembling a network of rivers and canals – actually shows the tracheal tip cell of a fruit fly. Fruit flies are heavily used in research and they are a common model organism in developmental biology. Researchers at EMBL use the larvae of fruit flies to study tracheal cell…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

14 May 2019

Walking on DNA

Picture of the week, Science & Technology EMBL is a world-leading organisation for life science research. Its scientists work in diverse research fields spanning the whole of molecular biology. While the molecules the researchers are working on are often microscopic and impossible to see with the naked eye, one research topic clearly…

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

7 May 2019

EMBL sees it all

Lab Matters, Picture of the week The hexagons visible in this Picture of the Week are the eyes of an ordinary housefly, visualised with a scanning electron microscope. Former staff member Anna Steyer, who captured this brilliant image, has coloured seven of the receptor areas of the eye to create a stylised version…

2019

lab-matterspicture-of-the-week

24 May 2012 Cell vesicles serve as transport pods to ferry cargo around the cell.

Picture Release: More than meets the eye

Picture of the week These spheres may look almost identical, but subtle differences between them revealed a molecular version of the robots from Transformers. Each sphere is a vesicle, a pod that cells use to transport materials between different compartments. The images, produced by Marco Faini from John…

2012

picture-of-the-week

20 March 2012 A slice through the tails of mouse sperm.

Picture release: Spring tails

Picture of the week As spring arrives, flowers seem to bloom everywhere – even under the microscopes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. But the ‘flowers’ in this picture actually help an animal, not a plant, to pass on its genes. The image, which has been false-coloured…

2012

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