{"id":25292,"date":"2012-03-20T06:34:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T05:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/?p=25292"},"modified":"2024-04-10T14:51:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T12:51:00","slug":"picture-release-spring-tails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/picture-of-the-week\/picture-release-spring-tails\/","title":{"rendered":"Picture release: Spring tails"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As spring arrives, flowers seem to bloom everywhere \u2013 even under the microscopes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. But the \u2018flowers\u2019 in this picture actually help an animal, not a plant, to pass on its genes. The image, which has been false-coloured for artistic effect, shows a slice through the tails of mouse sperm. Each \u2018flower\u2019 is the tail that a sperm cell wags to swim. Inside it, you can glimpse the secret behind sperm\u2019s typical swimming technique: two tubes called microtubules, surrounded by a ring of nine other microtubule pairs. With the help of specialist \u2018motor\u2019 proteins, these microtubules make the sperm tail beat, enabling the sperm to swim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The image was taken using an electron microscope, and shows sperm tails from a healthy mouse, magnified 46 000 times. While comparing sperm formation in healthy and genetically altered mice, Charlotta Funaya, a research technician at EMBL, was struck by the image\u2019s beauty. \u201cThis particular image didn\u2019t really serve a scientific purpose,\u201d she says: \u201cI took it because it looked pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.embl.de\/aboutus\/communication_outreach\/media_relations\/2012\/120320_Heidelberg_Pic\/EMBL_picr20mar12_tif.zip\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Download high-resolution (tiff; magnified 210 000 times)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div\n\n  \n  \n  class=\"vf-box vf-box--inlay\">\n  <h3 class=\"vf-box__heading\">More information<\/h3>\n  <p class=\"vf-box__text\">The image was originally taken (in black and white) while studying how sperm cells protect their genome from DNA sequences known as \u2018jumping genes\u2019, as part of work published by Ramesh Pillai from EMBL Grenoble and colleagues in\u00a0<em>Nature<\/em>\u00a0last year.\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/nature10672\" target=\"_blank\">DOI:\u00a010.1038\/nature10672<\/a>.<br \/><br \/>It was false-coloured for artistic effect by graphic designer Petra Riedinger at EMBL Heidelberg.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As spring arrives, flowers seem to bloom everywhere \u2013 even under the microscopes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. But the \u2018flowers\u2019 in this picture actually help an animal, not a plant, to pass on its genes. The image, which has been false-coloured&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":25294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17591],"tags":[954,1938],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-25292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-picture-of-the-week","category-science-technology","tag-mouse","tag-sperm"],"acf":{"show_featured_image":false,"vf_locked":false,"featured":false,"article_intro":"<p>Cross-section of sperm tails from a healthy mouse, pictured using an electron microscope<\/p>\n","article_sources":false,"related_links":false,"in_this_article":false,"color":"#007B53","youtube_url":"","mp4_url":"","video_caption":"","translations":false,"press_contact":"EMBL Generic"},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Picture release: Spring tails | EMBL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/picture-of-the-week\/picture-release-spring-tails\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Picture release: Spring tails | EMBL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As spring arrives, flowers seem to bloom everywhere \u2013 even under the microscopes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. 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