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- Nikon’s Small World in Motion competition showcased the best microscopic images of the year.
- The best entries are selected for their beauty and uniqueness.
- They are helping answer some of the world’s biggest questions, like how to cure cancer by studying melanoma cells or how the human body develops by looking at zebrafish embryos.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Below is a transcript of the video.
Storyteller: This is one of the best microscopic images of the year. It’s from Nikon’s Small World in Motion contest, where the best works are selected for their beauty and uniqueness. But there is much more to these images than their striking appearance. They also help answer some of the world’s biggest questions. The researchers captured this process of transformation of melanoma cells into two compartments, images obtained by placing the cancer cell in extreme confinement.
Gregory Adams Jr .: We can create environments in which we mimic the microenvironment of the human body. Narrator: And we are seeing how the cell adapts and moves in this microenvironment. Adams: So we call one part, the small round part, the cell body and the long part, the leading bleb, and the leading bleb always takes the cell body to this other location during cell motility.
Storyteller: Knowing how cells adapt and change in this environment is vital information about how cancers form and move through the body.
Adams: If we can help understand cell motility, hopefully one day we can help reduce the spread of cancer.
Storyteller: And you are not alone. Scientists Gloria Slattum and Stephan Daetwyler were able to trace the development and movement of cancer cells in a zebrafish embryo, the tiny blue dot that can be seen moving through the pink and purple dots on other cells. These spots are thanks to a fluorescent component that can be fused with any protein, first extracted from jellyfish by the late Nobel laureate Roger Tsien.
Gloria Slattum: By filming all the tissue, we can analyze what is happening in the entire animal, but then we can zoom in and observe very precisely what is happening in certain cells.
Storyteller: And since zebrafish share more than 70% of their genetic components with humans, this footage can help inform research on how cancer cells interact in humans.
Stephan Daetwyler: Only if we know the context of a cell can we truly understand how it migrates through a body and how it interacts and which cells are important in these parts throughout the body.
Storyteller: The more information scientists in this area gather, the more they will be able to detect cancer cells early in formation and understand their movements afterward. But these kinds of microscopic images of zebrafish aren’t just limited to cancer research. It can also help to understand the development of the human body.
Daniel Castranova: The zebrafish is a really cool model, because it is obviously transparent as it develops, and we can observe the blood vessels as they grow.
Storyteller: That’s exactly what you’ve been seeing here: a developing zebrafish embryo and blood vessel formation, the spots are shown in green.
Castranova: We are interested in the genes that are involved in determining which vessels are arteries and veins. We are interested in how the blood vessels know where to grow in the developing embryo.
Storyteller: Understanding the development of blood vessels allows researchers like Daniel to track and monitor how blood moves in the early stages of body formation, a vital piece in the puzzle when developing targeted therapies for cancer treatments. You can also use similar techniques to learn how that blood is pumped in the first place by looking at microscopic hearts – a two-day-old zebrafish heart, to be precise.
Anjalei Schlaeppi: About 1% of babies are born with heart defects. For the United States last year, that represents 40,000 children. And if we want to help these children, we need to learn much more about hearts before they are born.
Storyteller: Observing how the heart works in microscopic detail is an important step.
Schlaeppi: There has always been a kind of question about how this heart pumps, what are the minimum elements necessary to pump blood in the heart? And that’s what I’m trying to find out.
Storyteller: Anjalie and her colleagues looked at the zebrafish heartbeat to identify specific functions and mechanisms, such as the way the heart beats without reverse blood flow, which will help uncover these mysteries and, more importantly, help to prevent birth defects. And this technology is advancing so far that scientists can now even look at microscopic images of our brains, because this is not a glaring beam in the night sky. You are actually developing brain cells. Andy Moore, a postdoctoral associate at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, analyzed the growth of active neurons in rat embryos. This footage shows a critical step in brain development, the period in which the neuron decides which of the many neurites becomes an axon, the part that will be in charge of sending an electrical current. And even images like Andy’s, this information was not properly understood.
Andy moore: It turns out that a lot of these things that we thought we understood very well from textbooks maybe didn’t work as well as they could now that we have live movies in front of us and all these new technologies that we can use to see those questions.
Storyteller: Andy and his team can begin to look at how neurons transmit, function, and develop in extreme detail, as well as how these cells grow and how proteins within the brain move and push things, which in turn allows them to them and other researchers to see how serious neurological diseases like ALS are also formed. But other competing images were slightly older and helped shed light on important ecosystems. Eric Lind captured this collection of images of a freshwater snail embryo in which you can see the heartbeat as it develops. And Richard Kirby, a plankton specialist, captured this horseshoe worm larva. These species may not be as well known as other stars of aquatic life, but …
Richard Kirby: It is one of the largest hidden life worlds on this planet, and changes at the bottom will translate into changes at the top. Therefore, looking at the base of the marine food chain gives you a way to understand what is happening in the ecosystem and the changes in the ecosystem in particular.
Storyteller: But this year’s winner of the Small World in Motion competition was not alive at all. The star of the show was a simple drop of water. Technically, microdroplets that are 80% water and 20% ethanol. The video was taken by Xiao Yan and Kazi Rabbi, whose research focuses on creating surfaces that repel water, which can be seen in the video, something that could help manufacturers create energy efficient technologies, such as improving the Air conditioning units or stop pipes from freezing in winter or even prevent goggles from fogging up. And it is this image that sums up what microscopic images do best: take us all into the invisible world of the tiny and miniscule and offer a glimpse of the future.
