This photo of an embryonic hand of a Madagascar giant day gecko (Phelsuma grandis) taken by Grigorii Timin and Michel Milinkovitch (University of Geneva) was awarded first place in the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Taken with a confocal microscope at 63X magnification. Credit: Grigorii Timin and Michel Milinkovitch/Nikon
Science is an art—and vice versa. Perhaps nothing portrays that better than Nikon’s annual Small World Photo Microscopy Competition.
In its 48th year, the first-place prize was awarded to Grigorii Timin, supervised by Michel Milinkovitch at the University of Geneva, for his image of an embryonic hand of a Madagascar giant day gecko.
A visually stunning and painstaking technique, Timin used image-stitching to merge hundreds of images together to create the final image of his gecko. Preparing the sample was an added challenge. Timin performed whole-mount fluorescent staining and tissue clearing to capture the entire embryonic hand with a confocal microscope.
“This embryonic hand is about 3 mm (0.12 in) in length, which is a huge sample for high-resolution microscopy,” said Timin. “The scan consists of 300 tiles, each containing about 250 optical sections, resulting in more than two days of acquisition and approximately 200 GB of data.”
The final result gives a glimpse into the hidden beauty and complexity of the gecko, highlighting the nerves in a cyan color and the bones, tendons, ligaments, skin and blood cells in a range of warmer colors.
“This particular image is beautiful and informative, as an overview and also when you magnify it in a certain region, shedding light on how the structures are organized on a cellular level,” said Timin.
Second place was awarded to Caleb Dawson for his image of breast tissue showing contractile myoepithelial cells wrapped around milk-producing alveoli. Taking a week to process, the myoepithelial cells were stained with multiple rounds of fluorescent dyes and captured with a confocal microscope.
Third place was captured by Satu Paavonsalo and Sinem Karaman for their image of blood vessel networks in the intestine of an adult mouse.
In addition to the top three winners, Nikon Small World recognized 89 photos out of almost 1,300 entries from scientists and artists across 72 countries.
“The Nikon Small World Competition is a great opportunity to share how impressive nature is on a microscopic level, not only within a scientific community but also with the general public,” said Timin.
Small World in Motion
Scientist Caleb Dawson (The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) captured this photo of breast tissue showing contractile myoepithelial cells wrapped around milk-producing alveoli for second place in the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Taken with a confocal microscope at 40X magnification. Credit: Caleb Dawson/Nikon
In 2011, the sister competition of Nikon Small World—Nikon Small World in Motion—was launched in response to technology advances allowing for recording movies or digital time-lapse photography through microscopes.
This year, the first-prize in the 12th annual Nikon Small World in Motion, was awarded to Eduardo E. Zattara for his striking video of lateral line cells and melanocytes migrating in a zebrafish embryo. Utilizing time-lapse imaging in an 8-hour window, Zattara’s video highlights the beautiful and dynamic study of evolutionary developmental biology.
Melanin-forming cells known as melanocytes (colored in orange) move below the zebrafish’s skin to reach their final positions. While in green, sensory organ progenitors migrate along the lateral line of the zebrafish embryo. Zattara used fluorescence to contrast the various cell types during this developmental period in the embryo.
“This recording came out very clean and required almost no post-processing. It is an astonishing display of the dynamics of cell migration during development,” said Zattara. “The result was a video that was both biologically informative and visually striking. It was by far my favorite microscopy video to render.”
Scientist Caleb Dawson (The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) captured this photo of breast tissue showing contractile myoepithelial cells wrapped around milk-producing alveoli for second place in the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Taken with a confocal microscope at 40X magnification. Credit: Caleb Dawson/Nikon
Second place was awarded to Christophe Leterrier for his 12-hour time-lapse of cultured monkey cells labeled for plasma membrane and DNA. In order to capture this video, Leterrier had to keep the cells alive throughout the entire acquisition time, with proper temperature and humidity control, as well as minimal phototoxicity from laser illumination.
Third place was awarded to Ahmet Karabulut for his video of sea anemone neurons and stinging cells showing their dynamic processes.
This year’s judging panel for both Small World and Small World in Motion included:
- Gustavo Menezes, Associate Professor and Head of the Center for Gastrointestinal Biology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais
- Nikolay Nikolov, Senior Video Journalist at The New York Times
- Annaliese Nurnberg, Photo Editor at The Washington Post
- Clare Waterman, Cell Biologist and Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Information provided by Nikon.