Striking imagery

The images above were featured in the recent Biomedical Image Awards of the Wellcome Centre Medical Photographic Library in London, UK. They are part of a growing collection, now numbering over 150 000 images. In the photograph at top left, spinal nerves can be seen growing into the wing bud of a four-day chick embryo. Amid the long striations of the sea squirt heart at bottom left, the gap junctions between the muscle cells show up as green spots. At top right, sperm cells are shown clustering around a human embryo about five days after fertilization. The embryonic and sperm nuclei are pink, and the sperm tails green. In the dividing mouse fibroblast at bottom right, the cytoskeleton (green and blue) is almost completely dismantled, whereas it is intact in the surrounding non-dividing cells. (The images were provided by the Wellcome Centre, and taken by Biology in pictures Striking imagery We are looking for the most interesting and significant microscopy images, illustrating real science — and if they are visually striking, so much the better. The creator of the best image will receive one of the new Olympus CAMEDIA digital cameras. The competition is open to all microscopists. The closing date for entries is 1st November 1997. See the July issue of Current Biology for further details.