Picture of the Week
Underwater butterfly
In the Leptin Group, Eva Hasel investigates the innate immune system in Japanese rice fish.…
The birth of tentacles
The image shown here, taken by Anniek Stokkermans from EMBL’s Ikmi Group, shows a larva of Nematostella vectensis.…
Ring of fire
This image has been composed from thousands of individual super-resolution microscopy images. It was created by Markus Mund in the Ries Group.…
Skittles for science
What might also be an artistic representation of a scattered bowl of Skittles is actually a 3D reconstruction of a high-pressure frozen HeLa cell.…
Tumour takeover
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…
Birth of two HeLa stars
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…
Skin mosaic
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,…
EMBL makes insulin visible
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 […]…
Skin of the zebra
What look like dunes in the desert are actually muscles underneath the epidermis of a zebrafish embryo. The epidermis is patterned by ridges forming its scales. The image was taken with a scanning electron microscope. These microscopes produce images by scanning the surface of a sample with a…
Inside out, and grub becomes fly
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 […]…
