7/18/2006: Gallery of awesome biomedical images

[Undertoad]

Neatorama finds this tremendous gallery of award-winning bio images from 2006.

This particular shot, which Neatorama also highlighted, is of a cerebellar granule cell - a brain cell, grown in a lab. Wikipedia entry on cerebellar granule cells - they make up half the cells in the central nervous system. Those long tendrils reaching out? From what I can gather from the Wiki entry, they reach out and create connections with other brain cells.

Hard to say, I'm not a brain scientist. But the image is striking, as are many of the gallery. Such as



A mosquito in flight, engorged with blood



Bread mold



The surface of a stinging nettle leaf. It turns out all those prickers are little hypodermic needles! They don't just prick you, they INJECT. From the caption, The large stinging hairs are hollow tubes with walls of silica making them into tiny glass needles. The bulb at the base of each hair contains the stinging liquid, which includes formic acid, histamine, acetylcholine and 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin). The tips of the glassy hairs are very easily broken when brushed, leaving a sharp point, which can pierce the skin to deliver the sting.

These and all the other images are like Hubble images to me, but directed inward, not outward - microscopic, not telescopic.

And I guess another lesson is that there is beauty everywhere - even in annoying mosquitos, mold, and nettles.