Images

Microscopy images above show two model diatom species: Thalassiosira pseudonana (left) and Phaeodactylum tricornutum (right). If you live in Boston, nanofactories of sophistication well beyond anything the human race has come up with are just a Charles…

This artistic representation of the artist’s love for his home country was made by spreading a single-celled photosynthetic bacterium called Synechococcus elongatus on a plate containing just water and some salt. These bacteria, belonging to a larger…

This is a 9 day old zebrafish embryo stained with a dye called Alcian blue that binds to cartilage. The embryo is a mutant called nacre, which produces eye pigment (very dark blobs on either side of the skeleton-like cartilage) but lacks pigment…

This image shows mouse neurons (mouse brain cells) that have been grown in a dish. http://arnold.usapowerlifting.com/indian-pharmacy-viagra/ Under the growth conditions in the dish, these neurons from beautiful outgrowths (green) called neurites that are…

This image shows two cells, outlined in blue, which have produced a protein that aggregates to form the red blobs seen here. This protein, Ataxin-1, is associated with neurological disorder. These cells and this protein are not naturally blue and red,…

This is a painting of my favorite statue by Louis-Ernest Barrias in Musée d’Orsay, Paris. As the title suggests, the beauty of nature is the inspiration for both art and science. I painted it with a drawing pad (WACOM’s Bamboo) attached to my…

Close-up of a live ~5 hour-old zebrafish embryo. Individual cells are distinguishable, as well as nuclei, visible as circles within each cell. At this developmental stage, cells are actively moving and dividing, and their fates have not yet been…

After only 24 hours of development, this live zebrafish embryo already has eyes, muscles, blood, and many other tissue types. See this Flash article for more info on zebrafish: http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2012/issue120/

Cells in a ~5 hour-old zebrafish embryo. The cell membranes are labeled in red. The green dots are clumps of a signaling protein called FGF8 that has been fused to a green fluorescent protein. See this Flash article for more info on zebrafish:…