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Halloween

Halloween Fly-Through of a Mouse Skull

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Credit: Chai Lab, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Halloween is full of all kinds of “skulls”—from spooky costumes to ghoulish goodies. So, in keeping with the spirit of the season, I’d like to share this eerily informative video that takes you deep inside the real thing.


Cool Videos: The Ghost in the Lab Dish?

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

As Halloween approaches, lots of kids and kids-at-heart will be watching out for ghosts and goblins. So, to help meet the seasonal demand for scary visuals, I’d like to share this award-winning image that’s been packaged into a brief video.

The “ghoul” you see above is no fleeting apparition: it’s a mouse cell labelled to reveal its microtubules, which are dynamic filaments involved in cellular structure, transport, and motility. Graduate student Victor DeBarros captured this image a couple of years ago in the NIH-supported lab of Randall Duncan at the University of Delaware, Newark, as part of research on the rare skeletal disorder metatropic dysplasia (MD).