Brainbow
Its not often you can geek out on Science Photography and admire something beautiful at the same time…. but then I stumbled across Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging competition. All of the images are stunning and beautiful in their own way, but this image seemed all the more remarkable because its not using any photographical trick like infrared or “epi-illumination”.
Instead its using something called Brainbow. The picture shows the brain stem of a transgenic mouse that has been modified to express 4 different fluorescent proteins randomly in different neurons. Much like pixels make many different colors possible on your screen, the different random combinations of green, red, cyan and orange fluorescent proteins make it possible to color individual neurons in nearly 100 different hues. You never know from the beginning which color every individual neuron is going to get, but with a choice of nearly 100 different possibilities chances are you’re going to observe every individual neuron glow in a different hue, making it possible to chart complex neuronal pathways.
The use of fluorescent proteins is an important technique to visualize for instance where different genes are being expressed. The gene that encodes the fluorescent protein, first found in jellyfish, can be introduced next to the gene of interest in the transgenic animal. Then both genes are going to be expressed at the same time and you can get a marker of what organ or what part of the brain your gene of interest is being expressed. It’s simply going to glow in the dark.
Literally mental.
Filed by Kieran at October 8th, 2008 under Photography, Science