Biophysical Society’s 2018 Art of Science Image Contest – NIH Director's Blog (original) (raw)

Zooming In on Meiosis

Posted on December 6th, 2018 by Dr. Francis Collins

Credit: Simone Köhler, Michal Wojcik, Ke Xu, and Abby Dernburg, University of California, Berkeley

Meiosis—the formation of egg and sperm cells—is a highly choreographed process that creates genetic diversity in all plants and animals, including humans, to make each of us unique. This kaleidoscopic image shows cells from a worm exchanging DNA during meiosis.

You can see a protein-based polymer tether (green) from what’s called the synaptonemal complex. The complex holds together partner chromosomes (magenta) to facilitate DNA exchange in nuclei (white). Moving from left to right are views of the molecular assembly that progressively zoom in on the DNA, revealing in exquisite detail (far right) the two paired partner chromosomes perfectly aligned. This is not just the familiar DNA double helix. This is a double helix made up of two double helices!

Posted In: Snapshots of Life

Tags: art, Biophysical Society’s 2018 Art of Science Image Contest, C. elegans, chromosome, developmental biology, developmental disabilities, DNA, DNA exchange, double helix, egg cells, imaging, meiosis, miscarriage, PALM, photo-activated localization microscopy, sperm, stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, STORM, superresolution imaging, synaptonemal complex, worm

Tracking Peptides in Cell Soup

Posted on November 15th, 2018 by Dr. Francis Collins

Credit: William Wimley, Tulane University, New Orleans

If you think this soup looks unappealing for this year’s Thanksgiving feast, you’re right! If you were crazy enough to take a sip, you’d find it to be virtually flavorless—just a salty base (red) with greasy lipid globules (green) floating on top. But what this colorful concoction lacks in taste, it makes up for as a valuable screening tool for peptides, miniature versions of proteins that our bodies use to control many cellular processes.

In this image, William Wimley, an NIH-supported researcher at Tulane University, New Orleans, has stirred up the soup and will soon add some peptides. These peptides aren’t made by our cells, though. They’re synthesized in the lab, allowing Wimley and team to tweak their chemical structures and hopefully create ones with therapeutic potential, particularly as smart-delivery systems to target cells with greater precision and deliver biological cargoes such as drugs [1].