Arabidopsis, a small plant related to mustard, was the first plant to have its genome sequenced, and is a model organism for biological studies of flowering plants. The anther is the part of a flower that produces pollen. This image shows a close-up of the anther’s three-dimensional structure.

This image illustrates algae living symbiotically with the coral. Studying the relationship between coral and microbes helps researchers understand how environmental factors such as climate change affect coral health. To create this image, 11,000 two-dimensional pictures were combined to make a three-dimensional computer model.

Crohn’s Disease is an inflammatory intestinal disorder that can greatly impact an individual’s quality of life. Differences between individuals in the properties of cells that line the intestines help to determine susceptibility to this and similar disorders. Here, the fluorescent color indicates the presence of protective proteins produced by these intestinal cells.

Aqua Anio Novus, built almost 2000 years ago, was one of the greatest aqueducts of Rome. As water flowed through the aqueduct, it left behind thousands of thin layers of precipitated minerals. The travertine rock produced by these mineral deposits and the microbes that live in them is shown here, sampled in cross-section to show the record of water flow from the era of ancient Rome to modern times. Studying the composition of these layers will provide new insights into the history of the Roman water supply.

During embryonic development of some organisms including mice and humans, certain genes will exhibit genomic imprinting: cells will express only the copy of the gene expressed from one parent, either the mother or the father. In the study that produced this image, researchers analyzed the overall tissue-specific gene expression of a maternally-expressed imprinted gene, Zim1, during mouse embryo development. The nucleus of each cell is labeled with blue dye, and cells expressing the gene are also labeled with red dye. 

The inner lining of the small intestine is not smooth; it is wrinkled and folded, so that its internal surface area is much greater than it first appears. These wrinkles, called villi, can be seen here in a cross-section of a young pig intestine. The extra surface area allows the intestine to quickly absorb nutrients from food. Food scientists examine the development of the digestive system in animal models to help design better nutritional supplements for both animals and people.

The glow seen inside these cells is produced by a biosensor that responds to oxidation state. Cells were genetically engineered to produce the sensor, allowing researchers to track how various environmental conditions, including oxidative stress, affect different parts of the cell.

Cutting into the smooth green stem of a plant reveals the dazzling diversity of the cells within. Tissues within the stem distribute nutrients, provide structural support, and protect the plant from disease. All of these cell types can be seen in this cross-section of a stem of Miscanthus, a perennial grass.

This image gives a closer look at the cells inside a stem of Miscanthus, a perennial grass. Although different cell types within the stem have different shapes and sizes, they all share a common structural feature; the wall of each cell is strengthened by cellulose, a complex sugar. If researchers can develop an efficient process to convert cellulose into fuel, Miscanthus could become a major sustainable fuel source.

The tapestry-like material in this image is actually fibers of collagen, the main component of connective tissue. Researchers investigate the structure of healthy and injured connective tissue, such as the horse tendon shown here, to devise and test new ways to heal those injuries in both animals and people.

Studying tiny objects, like this delicate seedling of an Arabidopsis plant, requires both a powerful microscope and powerful software. This seemingly simple image was produced by combining the clearest aspects of over forty different pictures taken at different depths of focus, giving a hint at the seedling’s three-dimensional structure.

A worker honey bee must feel hunger not only for herself, but for the whole hive. By examining cells within the honey bee brain that help regulate this hunger sense, scientists can learn more about how the brain tracks nutritional state, and how it controls behavior. This image shows an intact slice of a honey bee brain (bottom); a laser was used to dissect out nutrient-sensing brain cells (top), leaving the rest of the slice (middle) behind.

Single-celled organisms are in constant competition with their fellow microbes, conducting chemical warfare on a scale too small for see with the naked eye. When a petri dish of archaea and the chemicals they produced were allowed to dry and crystallize, however, they produced the dramatic and intricate pattern seen here.

A microscope’s resolution, the amount of detail that it can capture in an image, can be described with a point spread function. The point spread function is a mathematical description of the blurring that occurs around an imaged point of light. The higher the quality of the microscope, the less blurring will occur around each point.

The brain is made up of many tiny cells called neurons that communicate with each other through a complicated network of delicate, branching connections. To study those connections more closely, researchers sometimes grow neurons in artificial conditions, but a two-dimensional Petri dish is very different from the three-dimensional scaffold found inside the brain. This image shows a hydrogel substrate created to more closely mimic the natural scaffold of the brain, entwined with the branching outgrowths of developing neurons.

The foods and nutritional supplements fed to pigs and other farm animals have an important effect on the gastrointestinal health of the herd. Animal scientists test different combinations of feed and supplements, and then track the occurrence of disease. They also examine the resulting health of the digestive system using images like this cross-section of a pig intestine.

The complex, multicolored scaffold in this image shows the interconnected nerves and muscles inside a fruit fly larva. With a simple dissection, researchers can reveal and study these connections. For example, a single nerve cell can be removed, and the responses of the surrounding nerve and muscle cells can then be observed and recorded.

Image provided by Carly Hill, Bruce Fouke Lab
Research funded by the Office of Naval Research

This image illustrates algae living symbiotically with the coral. Studying the relationship between coral and microbes helps researchers understand how environmental factors such as climate change affect coral health. To create this image, 11,000 two-dimensional pictures were combined to make a three-dimensional computer model.

This image was created by the 2009 Girls Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science (GAMES) summer camp members. As part of the camp, 30 middle-school age girls worked with microscopes and image software to produce a model of the structures inside a plant cell. In the week-long camp, GAMES participants completed experiments, took samples, and presented scientific posters.

One of the challenges of microscopy is that adjacent sources of light, such as two molecules of fluorescent dye, will appear to blur together. This image of the internal structures of animal cells is unusually clear because of the novel technique used to produce it. The fluorescent dyes used here switch between “on” and “off” states, so that in two sequential images, neighboring molecules of dye take turns lighting up. Several images can be combined so that all the dye appears to be “on” at once, but the individual points do not blur together.

Fragile X syndrome is an inherited intellectual disability disorder that affects the development and function of neurons, cells in the brain. Neurons are physically connected to each other through neurites—the long, branching structures that can be seen in this image—that end in synapses, the green knobs that are visible in the inset close-up. Researchers hope to better understand differences in the structure and activity of synapses in the brains of Fragile X patients in order to design treatments for the disorder.

A section of a piglet hippocampus, a region of the brain that participates in memory formation, has been labeled with green dye in this image to show the location of NeuN. NeuN is a protein that is produced by neurons, but not by the support cells in the brain. The goal of this study was to determine how long a newly divided neuron takes to start producing NeuN.