2011 Visualization Challenge Winners Announced (8 of 19) (IMAGE)
Caption
Illustration People's Choice goes to this illustration of the Separation of a Cell. This is a cell undergoing mitosis or 'cell division'. The cell membrane is shown in blue and the cell's chromosomes in yellow. Mitosis is a well studied and well imaged phenomenon in 2D images, but never before seen quite like this! What makes this image particularly special is the use of a special new fluorescent protein called MiniSOG (Shu et al., 2011), shown flying out of the cell. MiniSOG promises to do for electron microscopy what the famous 'green fluorescent protein' did for light microscopy, by allowing scientists to target certain structures then see these clearly under electron microscopes. Here MiniSOG has been tagged to another protein, H2B, to bind to DNA and this particular cell was caught in the process of mitosis. The data itself was reconstructed using the relatively new technique of 3D Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy (SBFSEM), where the specimen is repeatedly cut then imaged and image then traced to produce the beautiful 3D image you see here. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the Feb. 03, 2012, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper was titled, “2011 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.”
Credit
Image courtesy of Andrew Noske, Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy & Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego; Horng Ou, Clodagh O’Shea, Salk Institute
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