In the News
NCMIR scientist wins first place in the 2006 Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition
A strikingly colorful light microscopic image of mouse retina has earned first place for NCMIR scientist Thomas Deerinck in the 2006 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. The quadruple-fluorescence confocal image, taken as part of a study on neurofibromatosis, shows the highly complex organization of some of the different cell types present in the retina.
Neurofibromatosis is a genetic disorder of the nervous system that causes tumors to form on nerves throughout the body, including a type of tumor called an optic nerve glioma that can result in childhood blindness.
Deerinck, along with NCMIR scientists Mark Ellisman, Diana Price, Frank Hughes, and Keun-Young Kim, in conjunction with David Gutmann and colleagues at the Washington University of Medicine in St. Louis are working to characterize glial cell tumors in the visual pathways and brains of genetically engineered mice. These mice may serve as an animal model of neurofibromatosis in children, and may also be significant in understanding the biology of other devastating brain tumors, such as astrocytomas.
The image shown here is of a wildtype (normal) mouse retina in the optic fiber layer. This layer is responsible for relaying information from the retina to the brain and was fluorescently stained to reveal the distribution of glial cells (green), DNA and RNA in the cell bodies of the retinal ganglion neurons (orange) and their optic nerve fibers (red), and actin in endothelial cells surrounding a prominent branching blood vessel (blue). By studying the microscopic structure of normal and diseased retina and optic nerves, scientists hope to better understand the altered biology of the tissues in these tumors with the prospects of developing therapeutic interventions. This image was recorded using an Olympus Fluoview FV-1000 confocal imaging system located at NCMIR.
The Olympus BioScapes, now in its fourth year, celebrates excellence in the imaging of life science specimens captured through light microscopes using any brand of equipment. This year’s competition drew more than 1200 entries from 52 countries and was judged by a panel of distinguished scientists and photographers. In addition to first place, Deerinck also won two honorable mentions in this year’s competition with images of retinal arteries and cultured human cancer cells. He also becomes the only person to have won both this competition and the prestigious Nikon Small World Imaging competition (in 2002). For more information see: www.olympusbioscapes.com.
The National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California San Diego develops state-of-the-art 3D imaging and analysis technologies to help biomedical researchers understand biological structure and function relationships in cells and tissues, and is supported by the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health.
