amyloid fibrils
Snapshots of Life: Amyloid Glows in Polarized Light
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: William Lewis, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta
While this may look like one of those bold canvases from the brush of an Abstract Expressionist, it’s actually a close-up of the biology underlying a rare, but relentless, group of conditions known as amyloidosis. This winner of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s 2013 BioArt contest traces in exquisite detail the damage that amyloid, which is the abnormal accumulation of specific extracellular proteins, can inflict on the heart.
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