DBIO Image Gallery

Heterogeneous patterns formed by the Min protein system of E. coli along a flat lipid membrane.

Bend instability (Fréedericksz transition) in microtubule mixtures modeled by the 3D Ericksen-Leslie active hydrodynamics of active fluids. Unique steady state pattern of the nematic at the balance of active and elastic stresses leading to complex wrinkling behavior. https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/
abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L022061

These images represent our scientific discoveries focusing on collective curvature sensing and multicellular fluidity in developing human lung alveolospheres, highlighting the cell packing/shape (bottom right) and multicellular flow patterns (top left). From art perspective, our design looks like flying planets in the universe. We feel that these images will be very attractive to a broad audience in physics as well as biology and other scientific fields.

Neuroepithelial organoids with varying geometry and topology.

This image is a Gannet bird in plunge-diving behavior. It exemplifies how birds have evolved to develop sharper beak shapes, which serve to reduce the impact force.

This shows a moment of a large animal leaping out of the water. It involves the physics of utilizing the momentum acquired underwater to defy gravity upon surfacing.

Insects have evolved complex righting reflexes to reorient themselves for aerial stability, prey capture, and 3D navigation. This image shows a dragonfly rolling 180 degrees when falling upside down. During the 200ms righting maneuver, it senses its awkward initial body orientation, instructs its wing muscles to regulate the wing pitch asymmetry among the four wings. The resulting asymmetric flapping wing motion produces the right amount of torque to roll the body. Once it realigns with gravity, it happily transitions to a forward flight. Behavioral and computational analyses revealed a righting mechanism initiated from the dragonfly's visual systems to the observed wing pitch asymmetry in roll recovery (Wang, Melfi Jr., Leonardo, Science 2022).

This is a phase contrast image of 6 micron diameter polystyrene spheres propelled by dense actin comet tails regulated by a set of purified proteins. The unique heart-like structure displayed here is a result of the beads initially forming two tails and over approximately 20 minutes, the two tails collapse into one forming the bottom of the structure.

Faces of cell surface during virus uptake: This image depicts a range of shapes a cell surface could achieve when a virus enters a cell through endocytosis, including folds and crumples of the cell surface. The image presents a perspective from inside the cell surface, where the blue triangular mesh represents the cell surface and engulfs the virus (grey sphere with red spikes) using green filamentous surface proteins. The number of filaments increases along the y-axis, and membrane bending rigidity increases along the x-axis.

Cytokinetic bridge in mice embryonic fibroblasts imaged by using expansion microscopy and stained for microtubules(Red), Vimentin intermediate filament (yellow), centrosomal protein CEP215(green) and DAPI stain for nucleus

Plants defend themselves against outer stimuli and access to their sweet sap is closed off during extraction. But what happens when a plant gets overstimulated? An overstimulation as shown here with an electroshock of a basil leaf could lead to a lowering of the defense mechanisms making the sweet sap accessible after all.

The confocal fluorescence microscopy maximum intensity projection image of a COS7 cell under an applied flow. The cell is transfected with GFP tagged Glypican 1 protein and labelled with the plasma membrane dye DiI-C18. The flow applied transports the extracellular Glypican 1 proteins across the plasma membrane resulting in formation of protein concentration gradients as seen in the image. Blue color represents the GFP tagged Glypican 1 protein and green color represents the DiI-C18 membrane dye.

The image shows the hindwing imaginal disc at the late fourth instar stage of common buckeye, Junoia coenia, in the butterfly family Nymphalidae. The sample, stained with en/inv (blue), sal (crimson), hh (purple), ptc (yellow), and bs (green) for transcripts, was visualized by the Zeiss LSM 880 confocal microscope at Marine Biological Laboratory, MA.

This image shows the fluid flow-fields generated by a sea urchin larva under confinement. Sea urchins and several other marine animals like sea stars have larval stages with complex morphologies. These larvae employ ciliary beating for swimming and feeding at low Reynolds numbers. Time-lapse images from dark-field microscopy were visualized using Flowtrace, and pathlines were rendered in blue color.

Synchrotron radiation based X-ray fluorescence microscopy reveals localization of mercury clusters to the astrocytes lining the cerebral ventricular wall in the brain of small Indian mongoose. Mercury clusters can be seen in red and astrocytes shown in green are labeled using Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP) primary antibodies and gold-nano particle tagged secondary antibodies.

#FakeFish - Zebrafish sport striped patterns made up of brightly colored cells in their skin. Agent-based modeling provides a means of understanding cell behavior. Here we shown the

Rotating epithelial spheres show spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. Combining quantitative microscopy, active vertex model and continuum theory, we elucidate the mechanism of tissue rotations. We further discover that the asymmetric placement of topological defects underlie this symmetry breaking process. (References: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.29.510101v1)

An image of a HT22 cell where red represents the actin filaments, green represents the alpha-tubulin, and blue represents the nucleus. This image was taken using a confocal microscope with 60X oil immersion objective.