Bizarre bioscapes

I'm pleased to present this amazing image of a rat's hippocampus by Thomas Deerinck. It's a widefield multiphoton fluorescence image stained to reveal the distribution of glia (cyan), neurofilaments (green) and cell nuclei (yellow). Thomas Deerinck works at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego, USA. This image won second prize in the 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®.


Each year for the past seven, Olympus (the camera manufacturer) has run a digital imaging competition for those working in life sciences. Any human, animal or plant subject is allowed, and the images are selected and judged on the science they represent, the aesthetics of the picture and the technical proficiency of the photographer. All of the ten winning images are stunning: you can see them and many highly commended images at the Olympus BioScapes website.

Can you pick out the shape of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus (as in my Neurogenesis embroidery below) in Deerinck's prizewinning image? Looking at all those gorgeous colours, my fingers are itching to start a new embroidery!