In honor of UNC Research Week, the SOM Office of Research held an Art in Science Competition that sought beautiful images collected by biomedical researchers that both demonstrate the innovative research done in our School as well as beauty that is reflected in science.
We would like to extend a huge congratulations to the laboratories of Berfin Azizoglu, Ken Hutson and Lori O’Brien for submitting the winning images! Below is some more information about the images.
“Deep Inside the Liver” (Aashita Rajput, Jack Bennett, Dr. Berfin Azizoglu, Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, School of Medicine)
The liver is the only mammalian visceral organ that can regenerate. The Azizoglu laboratory studies the structure that underlies liver’s regenerative ability, the lobule. This confocal image shows the vasculature o fa mouse liver lobule, divided into three functional zones: venules in magenta, sinusoids in yellow, and portal vessels in cyan.
“Ear Steps” (Dr. Ken Hutson, Department of Otolaryngology / Head and Neck Surgery, School of Medicine)
Light sheet microscopic image from a mouse illustrating the cochlea (end organ for hearing) and its constituents, including spiral ganglion cells and their axons that form the auditory nerve, carrying information about sounds to the brain. Also shown are the vestibular ganglion cells which signal the brain about our balance. All ganglion cells are marked by TuJ1 (green), while specific subsets are also marked by antibodies to Calretinin (blue; high spontaneous firing rate) or to EYFP in NF107:Ai32 mice (red; low spontaneous firing rate). Note that as the auditory nerve enters the cochlear nuclear, each fiber bifurcates to terminate in each division of the cochlear nucleus – the first “steps” for analyzing auditory information in the brain. The image was acquired using the light sheet microscope in the UNC Microscopy Services Laboratory.
“Postnatal Duplex Mouse Kidney Neurovasculature” (Pierrre-Emmanuel N’Guetta, Jake Roetcisoender, Dr. Lori O’Brien, Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, School of Medicine)
This image shows a postnatal P0 mouse kidney immunostained for the renal arterial tree with alpha-Smooth Muscle Actin (SMA, magenta) and nerve with Tubullin Beta Class-III (Tubb3, green) overlayed with oil filter. The image depicts a rare urinary tract congenital defect resulting in ureteral duplication (duplicated collecting system). The kidney was imaged with the LaVision Ultramicroscope II LightSheet using an Olympus MVPLAPO 2X/.5 objective at the UNC Microscopy Service Laboratory.