Images of ovaries win stem cell contest
The ovaries of your average fruit fly are many things. Functional, for example. Complex. Very small. And vital for species survival.
But beautiful?
Well, judge for yourself. Graduate student Heather Flores’ photos of fruit fly ovaries were selected as winners in the NYSTEM Stem Cell Awareness Day Image Contest announced by Gov. David Paterson on Stem Cell Awareness Day, Sept 23.
The images will be included in a 2010 calendar that demonstrates the visual beauty of stem cell science. The complete calendar is available for downloading in PDF format.
“I always enjoy taking images of ovaries because they are very aesthetically pleasing to me,” said Flores. “I often find myself taking extra pictures just because they look nice and not necessarily because they will aid in my data collection.”
Left picture: A picture of an ovary from the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, with a mutation in the bag of marbles gene, which is required for germline stem cells to differentiate. Since these flies lack this gene, their stem cells cannot differentiate and accumulate, leading to a tumorous ovary. Each of the green cells with a red dot in them is a single stem cell. Typically, there should only be two to three stem cells.
Right picture: In this picture, the researchers artificially introduced a copy of a fully functional bag of marbles gene into the ovary of a D. melanogaster fly with a mutated bag of marbles gene. The functional gene rescued the mutation, allowing the germline stem cells to differentiate and undergo mitotic divisions.
- Krishna Ramanujan