In this image, viewed with a ZEISS ORION NanoFab microscope, the community of cells lining a mouse airway is magnified more than 10,000 times. This collection of cells, known as the mucociliary escalator, is also found in humans. It is our first line of defense against inhaled bacteria, allergens, pollutants, and debris. Malfunctions in the system can cause or aggravate lung infections and conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The cells shown in gray secrete mucus, which traps inhaled particles. The colored cells sweep the mucus layer out of the lungs.

This image was part of the Life: Magnified exhibit that ran from June 3, 2014, to January 21, 2015, at Dulles International Airport.

Wound healing requires the action of stem cells. In mice that lack the Sept2/ARTS gene, stem cells involved in wound healing live longer and wounds heal faster and more thoroughly than in normal mice. This confocal microscopy image from a mouse lacking the Sept2/ARTS gene shows a tail wound in the process of healing. See more information in the article in Science.

Related to images 3497 and 3500.

A cell in interphase, at the start of mitosis: Chromosomes duplicate, and the copies remain attached to each other. Mitosis is responsible for growth and development, as well as for replacing injured or worn out cells throughout the body. For simplicity, mitosis is illustrated here with only six chromosomes.

Network diagram showing a map of protein-protein interactions in a yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cell. This cluster includes 78 percent of the proteins in the yeast proteome. The color of a node represents the phenotypic effect of removing the corresponding protein (red, lethal; green, nonlethal; orange, slow growth; yellow, unknown).

The atomic structure of the morphine biosynthetic enzyme salutaridine reductase bound to the cofactor NADPH. The substrate salutaridine is shown entering the active site.

Viral RNA (red) in an RSV-infected cell. More information about the research behind this image can be found in a Biomedical Beat Blog posting from January 2014.

A crystal of rabbit GPDA protein created for X-ray crystallography, which can reveal detailed, three-dimensional protein structures.

This ACAPELLA robot for capillary protein crystallization grows protein crystals, freezes them, and centers them without manual intervention. The close-up is a view of one of the dispensers used for dispensing proteins and reagents.

To splice a human gene (in this case, the one for insulin) into a plasmid, scientists take the plasmid out of an E. coli bacterium, cut the plasmid with a restriction enzyme, and splice in insulin-making human DNA. The resulting hybrid plasmid can be inserted into another E. coli bacterium, where it multiplies along with the bacterium. There, it can produce large quantities of insulin. See image 2564 for an unlabeled version of this illustration. Featured in The New Genetics.

A 3D reconstruction, created using cryo-electron microscopy, of an ion channel known as the full-length serotonin receptor in complex with the antinausea drug granisetron (orange). Ion channels are proteins in cell membranes that help regulate many processes.

Luciferase-based imaging enables visualization and quantification of internal organs and transplanted cells in live adult zebrafish. In this image, a cardiac muscle-restricted promoter drives firefly luciferase expression.
For imagery of both the lateral and overhead view go to 3556.
For imagery of the lateral view go to 3558.
For more information about the illumated area go to 3559.

This photograph of kidney tissue, taken using fluorescent light microscopy, shows a close-up view of part of image 3723. Kidneys filter the blood, removing waste and excessive fluid, which is excreted in urine. The filtration system is made up of components that include glomeruli (for example, the round structure taking up much of the image's center is a glomerulus) and tubules (seen in cross-section here with their inner lining stained green). Related to image 3675 .

This image shows how the CRISPR surveillance complex is disabled by two copies of anti-CRISPR protein AcrF1 (red) and one AcrF2 (light green). These anti-CRISPRs block access to the CRISPR RNA (green tube) preventing the surveillance complex from scanning and targeting invading viral DNA for destruction.

Duplicated pair of chromosomes lined up and ready to cross over.

The long, stringy DNA that makes up genes is spooled within chromosomes inside the nucleus of a cell. (Note that a gene would actually be a much longer stretch of DNA than what is shown here.) See image 2540 for a labeled version of this illustration. Featured in The New Genetics.

Ecteinascidin 743 (ET-743, brand name Yondelis), was discovered and isolated from a sea squirt, Ecteinascidia turbinata, by NIGMS grantee Kenneth Rinehart at the University of Illinois. It was synthesized by NIGMS grantees E.J. Corey and later by Samuel Danishefsky. Multiple versions of this structure are available as entries 2790-2797.

Crystals of jack bean concanavalin A protein created for X-ray crystallography, which can reveal detailed, three-dimensional protein structures.

Cells progress through a cycle that consists of phases for growth (blue, green, yellow) and division (red). Cells become quiescent when they exit this cycle (purple). See image 2499 for a labeled version of this illustration.

Cell-like compartments spontaneously emerge from scrambled frog eggs. Endoplasmic reticulum (red) and microtubules (green) are visible. Video created using epifluorescence microscopy.

For more photos of cell-like compartments from frog eggs view: 6584, 6585, 6586, 6591, 6592, and 6593.

For videos of cell-like compartments from frog eggs view: 6587, 6588, and 6590.

The white circle in this image is a Petri dish, named for its inventor, Julius Richard Petri. These dishes are one of the most common pieces of equipment in biology labs, where researchers use them to grow cells.

The photo shows a confocal microscopy image of perineuronal nets (PNNs), which are specialized extracellular matrix (ECM) structures in the brain. The PNN surrounds some nerve cells in brain regions including the cortex, hippocampus and thalamus. Researchers study the PNN to investigate their involvement stabilizing the extracellular environment and forming nets around nerve cells and synapses in the brain. Abnormalities in the PNNs have been linked to a variety of disorders, including epilepsy and schizophrenia, and they limit a process called neural plasticity in which new nerve connections are formed. To visualize the PNNs, researchers labeled them with Wisteria floribunda agglutinin (WFA)-fluorescein. Related to image 3741.

Meiosis is the process whereby a cell reduces its chromosomes from diploid to haploid in creating eggs or sperm. See image 2546 for a labeled version of this illustration. Featured in The New Genetics.

This illustration shows, in simplified terms, how the CRISPR-Cas9 system can be used as a gene-editing tool. This is the fifthframe in a series of five. The CRISPR system has two components joined together: a finely tuned targeting device (a small strand of RNA programmed to look for a specific DNA sequence) and a strong cutting device (an enzyme called Cas9 that can cut through a double strand of DNA). For an explanation and overview of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, see the NIGMS Biomedical Beat blog entry, Field Focus: Precision Gene Editing with CRISPR and the iBiology video, Genome Engineering with CRISPR-Cas9: Birth of a Breakthrough Technology.

In many animals, the egg cell develops alongside sister cells. These sister cells are called nurse cells in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), and their job is to “nurse” an immature egg cell, or oocyte. Toward the end of oocyte development, the nurse cells transfer all their contents into the oocyte in a process called nurse cell dumping. This process involves significant shape changes on the part of the nurse cells (blue), which are powered by wavelike activity of the protein myosin (red). This image was captured using a confocal laser scanning microscope. Related to video 6754.

Proteins are long chains of amino acids. Each protein has a unique amino acid sequence. It is still a mystery how a protein folds into the proper shape based on its sequence. Scientists hope that one day they can "watch" this folding process for any given protein. The dream has been realized, at least partially, through the use of computer simulation.

Antibiotic resistance in microbes is a serious health concern. So researchers have turned their attention to how bacteria undo the action of some antibiotics. Here, scientists set out to find the conditions that help individual bacterial cells survive in the presence of the antibiotic rifampicin. The research team used Mycobacterium smegmatis, a more harmless relative of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which infects the lung and other organs to cause serious disease.

In this video, genetically identical mycobacteria are growing in a miniature growth chamber called a microfluidic chamber. Using live imaging, the researchers found that individual mycobacteria will respond differently to the antibiotic, depending on the growth stage and other timing factors. The researchers used genetic tagging with green fluorescent protein to distinguish cells that can resist rifampicin and those that cannot. With this gene tag, cells tolerant of the antibiotic light up in green and those that are susceptible in violet, enabling the team to monitor the cells' responses in real time.

To learn more about how the researchers studied antibiotic resistance in mycobacteria, see this news release from Tufts University. Related to image 5751.

Researchers have learned much of what they know about membranes by constructing artificial membranes in the laboratory. In artificial membranes, different lipids separate from each other based on their physical properties, forming small islands called lipid rafts.

Structural biologists create crystals of proteins, shown here, as a first step in a process called X-ray crystallography, which can reveal detailed, three-dimensional protein structures.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a movie worth? For researchers studying cell migration, a "documentary" of fruit fly cells (bright green) traversing an egg chamber could answer longstanding questions about cell movement. See 2315 for video.

Stereo triplet of a sea urchin embryo stained to reveal actin filaments (orange) and microtubules (blue). This image is part of a series of images: image 1047, image 1048, image 1049,  image 1051 and image 1052.

E. coli bacteria normally live harmlessly in our intestines, but some cause disease by making toxins. One of these toxins, called Shiga toxin (green), inactivates host ribosomes (purple) by mimicking their normal binding partners, the EF-Tu elongation factor (red) complexed with Phe-tRNAPhe (orange).

Find these in the RCSB Protein Data Bank: Shiga toxin 2 (PDB entry 7U6V) and Phe-tRNA (PDB entry 1TTT).

More information about this work can be found in the J. Biol. Chem. paper "Cryo-EM structure of Shiga toxin 2 in complex with the native ribosomal P-stalk reveals residues involved in the binding interaction" by Kulczyk et. al.

La sepsis o septicemia es la respuesta fulminante y extrema del cuerpo a una infección. En los Estados Unidos, más de 1.7 millones de personas contraen sepsis cada año. Sin un tratamiento rápido, la sepsis puede provocar daño de los tejidos, insuficiencia orgánica y muerte. El NIGMS apoya a muchos investigadores en su trabajo para mejorar el diagnóstico y el tratamiento de la sepsis.

Vea 6536 para la versión en inglés de esta infografía.

Zinc is required for the function of more than 300 enzymes, including those that help regulate gene expression, in various organisms including humans. Researchers study how plants acquire, sequester and distribute zinc to find ways to increase the zinc content of crops to improve human health. Using synchrotron X-ray fluorescence technology, they created this heat map of zinc levels in an Arabidopsis thaliana plant leaf. This image is a winner of the 2015 FASEB Bioart contest and was featured in the NIH Director's blog.

Nucleotides in DNA are copied into RNA, where they are read three at a time to encode the amino acids in a protein. Many parts of a protein fold as the amino acids are strung together.

See image 2510 for a labeled version of this illustration.

Featured in The Structures of Life.

Cross-section of skin anatomy shows layers and different tissue types.

The cerebellum is the brain's locomotion control center. Found at the base of your brain, the cerebellum is a single layer of tissue with deep folds like an accordion. People with damage to this region of the brain often have difficulty with balance, coordination and fine motor skills.

This image of a mouse cerebellum is part of a collection of such images in different colors and at different levels of magnification from the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR). Related to image 5795.

Each of the colored specs in this image is a cell on the surface of a fish scale. To better understand how wounds heal, scientists have inserted genes that make cells brightly glow in different colors into the skin cells of zebrafish, a fish often used in laboratory research. The colors enable the researchers to track each individual cell, for example, as it moves to the location of a cut or scrape over the course of several days. These technicolor fish endowed with glowing skin cells dubbed "skinbow" provide important insight into how tissues recover and regenerate after an injury.

For more information on skinbow fish, see the Biomedical Beat blog post Visualizing Skin Regeneration in Real Time and a press release from Duke University highlighting this research. Related to image 3783.

Human cells with the gene that codes for the protein FIT2 deleted. After an experimental intervention, they are expressing a nonfunctional version of FIT2, shown in green. The lack of functional FIT2 affected the structure of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and the nonfunctional protein clustered in ER membrane aggregates, seen as large bright-green spots. Lipid droplets are shown in red, and the nucleus is visible in gray. This image was captured using a confocal microscope. Related to image 6773.

This transmission electron micrograph shows sections of mouse sperm tails, or flagella.

Lysosomes (yellow) and detyrosinated microtubules (light blue). Lysosomes are bubblelike organelles that take in molecules and use enzymes to break them down. Microtubules are strong, hollow fibers that provide structural support to cells. The researchers who took this image found that in epithelial cells, detyrosinated microtubules are a small subset of fibers, and they concentrate lysosomes around themselves. This image was captured using Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM).

Related to images 6890, 6891, and 6892.

Pretty in pink, the enzyme histone deacetylase (HDA6) stands out against a background of blue-tinted DNA in the nucleus of an Arabidopsis plant cell. Here, HDA6 concentrates in the nucleolus (top center), where ribosomal RNA genes reside. The enzyme silences the ribosomal RNA genes from one parent while those from the other parent remain active. This chromosome-specific silencing of ribosomal RNA genes is an unusual phenomenon observed in hybrid plants.

Many disease-causing microbes manipulate their host’s metabolism and cells for their own ends. Microsporidia—which are parasites closely related to fungi—infect and multiply inside animal cells, and take the rearranging of cells’ interiors to a new level. They reprogram animal cells such that the cells start to fuse, causing them to form long, continuous tubes. As shown in this image of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, microsporidia (shown in magenta) have invaded the worm’s gut cells (shown in yellow; the cells’ nuclei are shown in blue) and have instructed the cells to merge. The cell fusion enables the microsporidia to thrive and propagate in the expanded space. Scientists study microsporidia in worms to gain more insight into how these parasites manipulate their host cells. This knowledge might help researchers devise strategies to prevent or treat infections with microsporidia. For more on the research into microsporidia, see this news release from the University of California San Diego. Related to images 5778 and 5779.

Hippocampal neuron in culture. Dendrites are green, dendritic spines are red and DNA in cell's nucleus is blue. Image is featured on Biomedical Beat blog post Anesthesia and Brain Cells: A Temporary Disruption?

A 3D model of the human endoplasmic reticulum membrane protein complex (EMC) that identifies its nine essential subunits. The EMC plays an important role in making membrane proteins, which are essential for all cellular processes. This is the first atomic-level depiction of the EMC. Its structure was obtained using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy.

A crystal of bovine milk alpha-lactalbumin protein created for X-ray crystallography, which can reveal detailed, three-dimensional protein structures.

This image shows an abnormal, tetrapolar mitosis. Chromosomes are highlighted pink. The cells shown are S3 tissue cultured cells from Xenopus laevis, African clawed frog.

The green spots in this mouse brain are cells labeled with Calling Cards, a technology that records molecular events in brain cells as they mature. Understanding these processes during healthy development can guide further research into what goes wrong in cases of neuropsychiatric disorders. Also fluorescently labeled in this video are neurons (red) and nuclei (blue). Calling Cards and its application are described in the Cell paper “Self-Reporting Transposons Enable Simultaneous Readout of Gene Expression and Transcription Factor Binding in Single Cells” by Moudgil et al.; and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper “A viral toolkit for recording transcription factor–DNA interactions in live mouse tissues” by Cammack et al. This video was created for the NIH Director’s Blog post The Amazing Brain: Tracking Molecular Events with Calling Cards.

Related to image 6780.

Multicellular yeast called snowflake yeast that researchers created through many generations of directed evolution from unicellular yeast. Here, the researchers visualized nuclei in orange to help them study changes in how the yeast cells divided. Cell walls are shown in blue. This image was captured using spinning disk confocal microscopy.

Related to images 6969 and 6970.

This illustration highlights spherical pre-synaptic vesicles that carry the neurotransmitter glutamate. The presynaptic and postsynaptic membranes are shown with proteins relevant for transmitting and modulating the neuronal signal.

PDB 101’s Opioids and Pain Signaling video explains how glutamatergic synapses are involved in the process of pain signaling.