Best Microscopic-Life Images Of 2009

[Orheim]

First Place: Crown of Thorns

November 30, 2009--An image featuring a water flea's "crown of thorns"--the snaking ridge at top left--took top honors in the 2009 BioScapes microscope imaging contest, announced earlier this month. If water flea parents sense that their habitat is shared by their main predators, tadpole shrimp, the flea offspring sport these pointy crowns--which are unappetizing to the shrimp.

Zoologist Jan Michels, of the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany, added a dye to reveal the tiny animal's exoskeleton (green) and cellular nuclei (blue smudges). The blue-and-red dots are one of the animal's compound eyes, like those of a fly.

(See last year's BioScapes winners.)

The "stunning and unusual depiction of a whole organism" was selected from a record 2,000-plus entries, including images and movies, competition organizers said in a statement. Michels took home U.S. $5,000 worth of Olympus equipment.

The BioScapes competition, sponsored by Olympus America, Inc., recognizes microscope photos of plants, animals, and other life-forms that capture the "fascinating minutia of life," according to Olympus.

"These images and movies reflect some of the most exciting research being done around the world and reveal the art that exists in optical microscopy," Olympus's Osamu Joji said in a statement.

Each year the company chooses a panel of microscope-imaging experts to judge the competition, which is open to anyone using a light microscope--the familiar apparatus from high school science classes, which uses visible light and lenses to magnify objects.
— Photograph courtesy Dr. Jan Michels, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Second Place: Colorful Protein

What looks like a jumble of colorful yarn is actually a protein being created as cells divide. The above image, which won second place in the 2009 BioScapes microscope-imaging competition, is possibly the first high-resolution, 3-D image of the protein.

Biologist Chung-Ju Rachel Wang, of the University of California, Berkeley, photographed the protein's two parallel axes twisting around each other in a helix formation, then digitally colored the result to make the various parts recognizable.
— Photograph courtesy Chung-Ju Rachel Wang, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Third Place: Algae Sex

An algae "sex tape" snagged third place in the 2009 BioScapes competition. The time-lapse movie of the two-hour process shows the "power of sexual attraction even in simple algae," according to a statement by contest organizers.

Biochemist Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, of Australia's University of Melbourne, filmed the cells squeezing through narrow fertilization tubes that partner cells had just built between them (seen above in a series of still images).
— Photograph courtesy Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Fourth Place: Diminutive Devils

Looking like tiny deviled eggs, specimens of the freshwater algae species Haematococcus pluvialis were magnified a hundred times in the fourth-place image, taken by photographer Charles Krebs, of Issaquah, Washington.

The image is among ten award-winning microscope images and movies in the 2009 BioScapes competition that "reflect the awesome grace, beauty, and mystery of aspects of the natural world that cant be seen with the naked eye," Olympus's Osamu Joji said in a statement.
— Photograph courtesy Charles Krebs, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Fifth Place: Poisoned Algae

The single-celled algae Penium, treated with poison oryzalin, is seen in the fifth-place image, by biologist David Domozych of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Of the 10 winners and 65 honorable mentions from the 2009 BioScapes contest, 20 will be displayed at the San Diego Natural History Museum from December 7, 2009, till February 6, 2010.
— Photograph courtesy David Domozych, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Sixth Place: Sting Cells

Few would willingly approach the Portuguese man-of-war's venomous tentacles. But biologist Alvaro Migotto of Brazil's University of Sao Paulo took the risk--and won sixth place in the 2009 BioScapes competition for this up-close image of the animal's bubblegum pink stinging cells.

A delicate muscular band surrounding the cells (seen in light purple) allow the tentacles to easily contract into a gas-filled, floating chamber.
— Photograph courtesy Alvaro Migotto, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Seventh Place: Glowing Nerves

Like a fallen birch tree, glowing nerve fibers branch out along the tail of a three-day-old zebrafish. The image, which won seventh place in the 2009 BioScapes contest, uses the so-called brainbow technique, in which cells randomly select fluorescent proteins.

(Related: "'Brainbows' Illuminate the Mind's Wiring.")

The resulting palette of colors--seen in this image captured by Harvard University biologist Albert Pan--allows scientists to distinguish neighboring cells of the nervous system.
— Photograph courtesy Albert Pan, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Eighth Place: Flower Power

A picture of the sea anemone-like thale cress flower, seen 20 times larger than life, won eighth place in the 2009 BioScapes contest. The plant, photographed by biologist Heiti Paves of the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, is a popular model organism in plant biology and genetics.

(See Pavis's picture of a plant "phalus," which won a different microscope imaging contest earlier this year.)
— Photograph courtesy Heiti Paves, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Ninth Place: Salmon Embryos

Salmon embryos crowd together in the ninth-place image in the 2009 BioScapes contest, submitted by Haruka Fujimake of Bryant Pond, Maine.

Atlantic salmon are rebounding in some parts of their historic range--and are even swimming Paris's River Seine for the first time in a hundred years.
— Photograph courtesy Haruka Fujimaki, Olympus BioScapes

[Orheim]

Tenth Place: ALS Stem Cells

An image of motor nerve cells of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)--also known as Lou Gehrig's disease--(pictured above) earned tenth place in the 2009 BioScapes competition.

The nerve cells were created by stem cells taken from the skin cells of an 83-year-old ALS patient.

(Explore a brain interactive.)

Scientists are using stem cells and experiments in animals to better understand what triggers motor nerve cells to die in people with ALS.

The image was made by Gist Croft and Mackenzie Weygandt, both of New Yorks Columbia University and Project ALS.
— Photograph courtesy Gist Croft and Mackenzie Weygandt, Olympus BioScapes
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/photogalleries/best-tiny-microscopic-life-pictures/photo10.html

[Qoais]

Beautifully fascinating.