art
A Microbial Work of Art
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Scott Chimileski, Sylvie Laborde, Nicholas Lyons, Roberto Kolter, Harvard Medical School, Boston
Bacteria are single-celled organisms that are too small to see in detail without the aid of a microscope. So you might not think that zooming in on a batch of bacteria would provide the inspiration for a museum-worthy sculpture.
But, in fact, that’s exactly what you see in the image. Researchers grew in a lab dish Bacillus licheniformis, a usually benign bacterium from the soil that produces an enzyme used in laundry detergent. The bacteria self-organized into a sand dollar-like pattern to form a cohesive structure called a biofilm. The researchers then took a 3D scan of the living bacterial colony in the lab and used it to print this stainless steel sculpture at 12 times the dime-sized biofilm.
A Scientist and Conservation Photographer
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
These stunning images of animals were taken by Susan McConnell, whose photographs have appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Nature’s Best Photography, Africa Geographic, and a number of other publications. But photography is just part of her professional life. McConnell is best known as a developmental neurobiologist at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
How did McConnell find the time while tracing the development of the brain’s biocircuitry to launch a second career as a nature photographer? Her answer: Every research career has its seasons. When McConnell launched her lab in 1989 at the age of 31, she was up to her eyeballs recruiting staff, writing research grants, and pursuing many different leads in her quest to understand how neurons in the brain’s cerebral cortex are produced, differentiated, and then wired together into functional circuits.
Snapshots of Life: Finding Where HIV Hides
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Nadia Roan, University of California, San Francisco
Researchers have learned a tremendous amount about how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, infects immune cells. Much of that information comes from studying immune cells in the bloodstream of HIV-positive people. Less detailed is the picture of how HIV interacts with immune cells inside the lymph nodes, where the virus can hide.
In this image of lymph tissue taken from the neck of a person with uncontrolled HIV infection, you can see areas where HIV is replicating (red) amid a sea of immune cells (blue dots). Areas of greatest HIV replication are associated with a high density of a subtype of human CD4 T-cells (yellow circles) that have been found to be especially susceptible to HIV infection.
Snapshots of Life: Color Coding the Hippocampus
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Raunak Basu, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
The final frontier? Trekkies would probably say it’s space, but mapping the brain—the most complicated biological structure in the known universe—is turning out to be an amazing adventure in its own right. Not only are researchers getting better at charting the brain’s densely packed and varied cellular topography, they are starting to identify the molecules that neurons use to connect into the distinct information-processing circuits that allow all walks of life to think and experience the world.
This image shows distinct neural connections in a cross section of a mouse’s hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in the memory of facts and events. The large, crescent-shaped area in green is hippocampal zone CA1. Its highly specialized neurons, called place cells, serve as the brain’s GPS system to track location. It appears green because these neurons express cadherin-10. This protein serves as a kind of molecular glue that likely imparts specific functional properties to this region. [1]
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