Show Us Your Science
A crisp image of a microscopic wasp is composited (using an image processing technique called extended depth of field) from a series of photos taken through a light microscope by Douglas Cromey, MS, associate scientific investigator in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine in the College of Medicine – Tucson.
Basic science can lead to innovation in health care – and beauty under the microscope. We asked for you to “Show Us Your Science,” and faculty, staff and student researchers answered the call by sharing images captured under the microscope while at work in UArizona Health Sciences labs.
The request for submissions was inspired by a photo gallery on Health Sciences Connect featuring images captured by Andrea Wellington, an assistant research scientist in the Eggers Lab in the Department of Physiology at the College of Medicine – Tucson.
If you are interested in sharing your microscopic images with the Health Sciences community, please email your images to HealthSciencesConnect@arizona.edu.
Your email should include your name and title, your college, department or center affiliation, the name and affiliation of your lab, and a brief description of the research being studied in the image provided. Your description should be accessible to a general audience, with as little jargon as possible, to inspire a love in science in all viewers.
By suppressing estrogen activity in cells, researchers explore how decreased estrogen affects the brain during menopause. Actin, the cell’s “skeleton,” is shown in white and the nuclei are shown in blue. The mitochondria, which power the cells, are dyed orange. Image submitted by Marco Padilla-Rodriguez, PhD, microscopy specialist in the Brinton Lab at the Center for Innovation in Brain Science.
To investigate a hypothesis that decreased estrogen influences the brain during menopause, researchers use microscopes to visualize changes in a cell’s mitochondria (dyed orange) when estrogen activity is suppressed. Image submitted by Marco Padilla-Rodriguez, PhD, microscopy specialist in the Brinton Lab at the Center for Innovation in Brain Science.
A frozen section of fatty liver reveals itself under the microscope after being treated with a red dye that stains lipids (Oil Red O), and a blue dye that exposes the nuclei. The stain was performed by the late Andrea Grantham, senior research specialist at the RII Imaging Core on the Health Sciences campus. Image submitted by Douglas Cromey, MS, associate scientific investigator in the College of Medicine – Tucson.
Picrosirius red dye causes collagen to “light up” under polarized light in this image of a retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye. The sectioning and staining were performed by the late Andrea Grantham. Image submitted by Douglas Cromey, MS, associate scientific investigator in the College of Medicine – Tucson.
To investigate the effects of diabetes on vision, researchers in the Eggers Lab peek at retinas under high-powered microscopes. Andrea Wellington, assistant research scientist in the Department of Physiology at the College of Medicine – Tucson, captured the back of the retina in this image, titled “The Eye of Sauron.”
Does this look like an underwater plant or the vasculature of the retina? This image shows the blood vessels in a retina in green, the cells that make up the blood-retina barrier are red, and dopamine-producing amacrine cells are cyan. Image submitted by Andrea Wellington, assistant research specialist at the Eggers Lab in the College of Medicine – Tucson.