Art Gallery

Today’s image comes from this week’s Spring Seminar speaker, Shay Neufeld. This is a part of the brain called the striatum – a nucleus important for the learning and execution of coordinated, voluntary behaviors. Labelled in green are…

The black fibers seen in this image are tubulin, a protein that makes up a large part of the cytoskeleton of all cells. The cytoskeleton provides structural support for the cell, and tubulin also performs specific functions such as the mitotic spindle.…

This is an image of a small artery in a mouse eyelid that has formed a thrombus (blood clot). When a blood vessel is damaged, chemicals that attract platelets are released from the site of injury. Platelets in the flowing blood stick to the site, and in…

Image by Don W. Pottle This is an image of crystals of aspirin with caffeine.   An Excedrin tablet was crushed in water and allowed to dissolve.   Drops of the solution were placed on a glass microscope slide and allowed to dry.  Examining and…

The sequence of DNA bases found within our chromosomes serves as the instruction manual of life. Prior to cell division, this genetic information is accurately copied by a complex of different enzymes known collectively as the replisome. An essential…

The finger-like mound of cells in the central portion of this micrograph is an intestinal villus. The single layer of cells on its surface is the only barrier between the contents of the gut lumen and the inside of the body. The major job of these…

This is a short video of a robot in the Kishony and Springer labs at Harvard Medical School. We often conduct experiments that require watching what happens to microbes in a variety of conditions over time. This custom configured and programmed machine…

In all animals, the mother fills the egg with all the proteins and mRNAs necessary for early development. In Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies), when one of these genes is missing, it can lead to severe malformations in the larval exoskeleton. The top…

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…