9 Up-Close Scientific Images from the Wellcome Image Awards

One winning image: A baby Hawaiian bobtail squid. Image Credit: Mark R Smith, Macroscopic Solutions

 
Each year, the Wellcome Image Awards highlight some of the most fascinating scientific images from around the world, as chosen by a panel of experts from the fields of science communications and medicine. The awards go to photographers and researchers who create “informative, striking and technically excellent images that communicate significant aspects of healthcare and biomedical science,” according to the Wellcome Trust, a biomedical research charity based in the UK. Here are nine of this year’s winning images:

ZEBRAFISH EYE AND NEUROMASTS

Ingrid Lekk and Steve Wilson, University College London

In this 4-day-old zebrafish embryo, a certain gene expressed in the lens of the eye and other parts of the visual system glows red when it’s activated. You can see the lens of the eye, the head, and neuromasts (those red dots around the rim of the image) glowing red, while the nervous system glows blue.

BLOOD VESSELS OF THE AFRICAN GREY PARROT

Scott Birch and Scott Echols

This image was created using a 3D reconstruction of a euthanized parrot. It models the system of blood vessels in the parrot’s head and neck down to the capillary level.

INTRAOCULAR LENS IRIS CLIP

Mark Bartley, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Iris clips can treat nearsightedness, cataracts, and other eye issues. This photo shows an iris clip fitting on the eye of a 70-year-old patient. He regained nearly all his vision after the surgery.

BRAIN-ON-A-CHIP

Collin Edington and Iris Lee, Koch Institute at MIT

Researchers are developing ways to grow miniature organs on plastic chips in order to make drug testing more efficient. Instead of testing pharmaceuticals on people, scientists may one day test them on something like this—neural stem cells grown on a synthetic gel.

#BREASTCANCER TWITTER CONNECTIONS

Eric Clarke, Richard Arnett and Jane Burns, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Here is a visualization of discussions on Twitter using the hashtag #breastcancer. Each dot represents a Twitter user, and its size is based on how many other dots (or nodes) it is connected to. Each line represents a relationship with another Twitter user, and the thicker the line, the more that relationship shows up in the data. This part of the visualization relates to trending data—one tweet retweeted thousands of times.

PIGEON THERMOREGULATION

Scott Echols, Scarlet Imaging and the Grey Parrot Anatomy Project

No, this isn’t just an avian parody of The Scream. It shows the network of blood vessels, visualized using technology created by the same researcher as the parrot image above, under the skin of a pigeon. This dense network allows pigeons to control their body temperatures.

MICRORNA SCAFFOLD CANCER THERAPY

João Conde, Nuria Oliva and Natalie Artzi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Because microRNAs control the function and growth of cells, they have a lot of potential in cancer therapies. MIT researchers are working on a system that could deliver these short genetic sequences to cancerous cells. It consists of two microRNAs woven like a net with a synthetic polymer.

DEVELOPING SPINAL CORD

Gabriel Galea, University College London

This image shows a mouse’s neural tube, the structure from which the spinal cord develops. In each of the three images, the blue color draws attention to a specific tissue type. In the left image, the blue is the neural tube itself, which forms the brain and spine. In the middle, the blue is the mesoderm, which will become the inner organs. On the right, the blue shows the surface ectoderm that becomes hair, skin, and teeth.

All images courtesy the Wellcome Image Awards