Striking Image Competition Winners

Viruses seek to hijack host cells to replicate and spread, while cells evolve mechanisms to detect and suppress viral invasion. Here, we show that P-bodies (ancient cytoplasmic organelles) can trap SARS-CoV-2 RNA (cyan). The cell nuclei are yellow.

Rory Mulloy

Astrocytes are the most abundant cells in the human brain—even outnumbering neurons by 3:1 in some regions. We used these images to confirm that our dish contained exclusively astrocytes before performing additional experiments.

Yohan Ricci Zonta

Neurons are the longest-lived cells in the body; most neurons survive for our entire lives. Connections between neurons can be seen in the image here: green and yellow fibers project outward from the nucleus (blue/grey) to connect with nearby cells

Zachary Bailey

Somite-forming organoids derived from human pluripotent stem cells allow modelling the development of our vertebral column and congenital disorders that affect the spine.

Pranav Saligrama Ramesh

When iron builds up in the spinal cord it causes injury to nerve cells. Teal nerve cells on the right are marked by red scars of damage, while those on the left remain unharmed. The faint red spreading left shows the injury moving into healthy tissue

Dorsa Moezzi

This image captures a detailed microscopic view of a section of murine colonic tissue, revealing the remarkable organization and complexity of the gut lining.

Rita Hannawayya

This image of a transparent mouse heart shows the dense network of sympathetic nerves which course throughout and are used by the nervous system to communicate with heart muscle cells.

Jordan Lee

This image shows cord blood mesenchymal stem cells grown on microcarriers (small plastic beads ~200um in diameter) in a bioreactor. The green is a nuclei stain and the blue is an actin stain.

Erin Roberts

The ileal mesentery of a chronically inflamed TNFΔARE mouse stained to identify changes to the junctions (cyan) between endothelial cells of the collecting (magenta) and initial (red) lymphatic vessels.

Keith Keane

Lymph (magenta), the fluid circulating in our body's lymphatic system, communicates with lymph node blood vessels (yellow) through a conduit network. Their talk enhances the efficiency of our defences against potential pathogens.

Jingna Xue

The glial masters of the brain intertwined: Astrocytes & Oligodendrocytes. The image shows a group of oligodendrocytes (Red) and Astrocytes (Cyan) in an extensive web of countless connections, highlighting a miniature of the delicate wiring of mammalian brain.

Hiba Omairi

Effects of increasing UV micro-laser intensity on DNA damage induction and transcription in human cells. DNA damage is signalled by the histone mark γH2AX (cyan) and stops the generation of new RNA molecules (yellow), shown by lack of overlap.

Luc Provencher

Neurons (yellow) displaying two different dopamine receptor types in the mouse brain striatum. DR1 (red) is excitatory while DR2 (cyan) is inhibitory. The specific expression pattern of these two receptors is essential to normal movement and walking.

Stephanie Di Vito

Endothelial cells (purple) line the small capillaries of the brain, while pericytes (cyan) wrap around the endothelial cells to: 1) provide structural support; 2) regulate blood flow; 3) modulate immune response and 4) maintain

Cynthia Ufuoma Adjekukor

During development, tissues grow at different rates and follow patterns of development. This is a mouse embryo with nuclear (blue) and proliferation (white) staining showcasing growth at the front of the face (left) at embryonic day 11.

Beth Barretto

In the head of this 5 day old zebrafish embryo, we see a complex network of green fluorescent blood vessels and flowing red fluorescent red blood cells. This can be used to understand how blood vessel disease starts and progresses over time.

Jasper Greysson-Wong

Mouse heart cells are probed for cell membrane (yellow), contractile structure and volume (red), and nuclei (blue) to study the effect of ING5 on cardiac function and recovery.

Hamed Hojjat

Astrocytes (Red) & oligodendrocyte (Cyan) derived from parent neural stem cells. These integral braincells help maintain brain homeostasis and mediate injury response. Cells are shown establishing cross-talk networks through cell-cell contact points.

Hiba Omairi

A human lung cell showing the accumulation of DNA damage (green) after 30 days of low-level exposure to environmental radiation. It illustrates the danger of this form of radiation even at low doses, which in some individuals can develop into cancer.

John Danforth

Neurons, also known as nerve cells, are the fundamental units of the nervous system. Embryonic mouse neurons were allowed to grow and form processes in a media culture for 72 hours without any stimulations.

Dorsa Moezzi

After damage, peripheral nerves breakdown leaving behind pieces of debris. Debris needs to be removed to clear the way for axonal regeneration. Pro-inflammatory macrophages (yellow/cyan overlap) that invade the damaged nerve help remove the debris.

Kathleen Hagen

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common form of brain tumor. GBM develops in an organ with its own cellular architecture. This image indicates limited T cell infiltration, but macrophages and microglia predominate and are proximal to GBM stem cells.

Reza Mirzaei

Microglia labeled with IBA1 (orange) and glia labeled with GFAP (blue) in the dentate gyrus region of the mouse brain.

Laurie Wallace

FCGBP is is integral to the structural composition of colonic mucus. Here, we used cells with mutated FCGBP after inoculation with the colonic parasite E. histolytica to determine the effects of altered FCGBP in the mucus layer during infection.

Hayley Gorman

Resting human YT (NK) cell quad-labelling

Adley Mok