Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look.
Flower bud. Primordium (bud) of the weedy flower Tribulus sp. at its final stages of development. More than 100 images were captured at various depths using epi-illumination: these images were composed to create the final image.
M. Reza Dadpour, University of Tabriz, Department of Horticultural Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
Fifth Prize, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Beetle leg Lateral view of the adhesive pad on the front leg of a beetle (Clytus sp.), captured using autofluorescence.
Jan Michels, Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Institute of Zoology, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany.
Eighth Prize, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Wildflower seeds. The image was captured using brightfield reflected light.
Yanping Wang, Beijing, China
Ninth Prize, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
G-actin from chicken muscle. G-actin is a protein involved in muscle contraction. It forms loose bundles that self-organize into regular patterns. The image was captured using total internal reflectance fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy.
Dennis Breitsprecher, Hanover Medical School, Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, Hannover, Germany
Honorable Mention, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Solitary coral, Fungia sp. The coral's tentacle tips, called acrospheres, are visibly enhanced using a technique developed for doing epfluorescence imaging without a barrier filter.
James Nicholson, Coral Culture & Collaborative Research Facility, NOAA NOS NCCOS Center for Coastal Environmental Health & Biomolecular Research, Fort Johnson Marine Lab, Charleston, SC, USA.
Third Prize, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Cyanobacteria growing on rice plant roots.
Changbin Chen, University of Minnesota Department of Horticultural Science, St. Paul, MN, USA and Sumaira Mazhar, Department of Microbiology, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
Honorable Mention, 2010 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin.
David Domozych, Department of Biology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA.
Fifth Prize, 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Sensory axons (long, slender nerve fibers) covering the tail of a 3-day-old larval zebrafish. 'Brainbow' image using confocal microscopy. In the Brainbow technique, cells randomly choose combinations of red, yellow and cyan fluorescent proteins, so that they each glow a particular color. This provides a way to distinguish neighboring cells of the nervous system and follow their pathways.
Albert Pan, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Seventh Prize, 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Blood and lymphatic vasculature in mouse colon. Confocal microscopy.
Andrea Doni, Rozzano, Italy.
Honorable Mention, 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Microglia and cerebral blood vessels in living, anesthetized transgenic mouse. Multiphoton microscopy.
Karl Kasischke and Harris A. Gelbard, University of Rochester Medical Center, Center for Neural Development and Disease, Rochester, NY, USA.
Honorable Mention, 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®.
Moth, Captured at 20x.
Charles Krebs, Issaquah, WA, USA.
Honorable Mention, 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®.
‘Brainbow’ Zebrafish Larva
‘Brainbow’ zebrafish larva. 5 days old, captured using a 20x objective. Neurons are labeled with ‘Brainbow’ fluorescence, choosing random combinations of red, yellow and cyan fluorescent proteins, so that each glows a particular color. This provides a way to distinguish neighboring neurons, helping scientists follow complex neural pathways.
Dr. Albert Pan, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Fourth Prize, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
White wine. Moscato Azul from La Sirena winery, one year old. Magnification 31x.
Dr. Sondra Barrett, Sebastopol, CA, USA
Honorable Mention, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Juvenile sea squirt (Ascidiella aspersa). The three sets of rings are the forming musculature around siphons. Other visible structures include the esophagus, stomach, endostyle, peripharyngeal band and gill slits. Maximum intensity projection of 153 confocal microscopy slices.
Michael Veeman, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Honorable Mention, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Cerebral cortex vasculature. In situ imaging of the superficial vasculature of rat cerebral cortex by widefield confocal microscopy. Montage was created using 50 optical sections.
Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
Honorable Mention, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®.
Human molar tooth cusp with developing enamel. The hill shape below is the dentine of the tooth. Enamel develops upward, in swirling patterns. Field width = 1.65 mm. Image captured using polarized light.
Timothy Bromage, New York University College of Dentistry, Department of Biomaterials, New York, NY, USA and Alejandro Perez-Ochoa, Lasalle University, Madrid, Spain.
Honorable Mention, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®.
Extinct fossil diatom from Tertiary deposits in Dunkirk, Maryland. The interference contrast image was captured using a 40x objective.
Dr. Stephen Nagy, Helena, MT, USA
Third Prize, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Snail radula, a toothed, chitinous ribbon used for scraping, cutting and chewing food. Image captured at 30x magnification.
David Walker, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Sixth Prize, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Lobster eggs, magnified 1.25x.
Tora Bardal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Honorable Prize, 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®
Part of the essence of the Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition® is to bring a taste of the incredible stories emerging in today's research laboratories to the public. Exhibitions including selected images from each year's Olympus BioScapes competition travel the United States and Canada throughout the year, displaying at museums, academic libraries and research institutions. These exhibitions, open to the public, explain the competition in more detail and show some of the most extraordinary life science images in the world - images that lend inspiration to the scientists of tomorrow, and help us see the beauty, information and connections existing in all aspects of life science.
Tour Schedules
March 1, 2010 - November 30, 2010: McGill University, Montreal, Canada
August 1, 2010 - October 2010: Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, MD (2008 Tour)
Sept 1, 2010 - Nov 30, 2010: New York Hall of Science, Queens, NY (2009 Tour)
Dec 1, 2010 - Feb 28, 2011: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, MD (2010 Tour)
Dec 1, 2010 - Feb 28, 2011: San Diego Natural History Museum, San Diego, CA (2010 Tour)
March 1, 2011 - May 31, 2011: University of Rochester Medical Center, Miner Library, Rochester, NY (2009 Tour)
March 1, 2011 - May 21, 2011: Da Vinci Science Center, Allentown, PA (2010 Tour)
June 1, 2011 - July 31, 2011: Janelia Farm Research Campus, Ashburn VA (2009 Tour)
August 1, 2011 - Oct 31, 2011: Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, MD (2009 Tour)
August 1, 2011 - Oct 31, 2011: New York Hall of Science, Queens, NY (2010 Tour)
Nov 1, 2011 - Jan 31, 2012: Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL (2009 Tour)
Nov 1, 2011- Jan 31, 2012: Brown University Science Center, Providence, RI (2009 Tour)
Feb 1, 2010 - Apr 20, 2012: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (2010 Tour)
May 1, 2012 - July 31, 2012: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, MD (2010 Tour)
March 1, 2012 - May 31, 2012: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY (2011 Tour)
June 2012 - August 31, 2012: New York Hall of Science, Queens, NY (2011 Tour)
August 1, 2012 - Oct 31, 2012: Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, MD (2010 Tour)
Sept 1, 2012 - Nov 31, 2012: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (2010 Tour)