This reconstruction, produced by researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany using a technique called digital scanned laser light sheet fluorescence microscopy, shows the movements of all 16,000 cells in an 18-hour-old zebrafish embryo.
To make the film, the researchers injected a one-cell stage embryo with a genetically engineered fluorescent protein, which is propagated during cell division. They began imaging at the 64-cell stage and recorded 370 images, each less than 3 thousandths of a millimeter apart, in multiple directions at 1,226 time points separated by 90 second intervals. The recording was performed at a continuous speed of 10 million voxels (or volume elements) per second, to generate more than 430,000 images totalling 3.5 terabytes of data.
The movie is one of 16 which accompany a paper in today's issue of Science, and which have been made available online at the digital embryo repository website. Analysis of the three-dimensional cell division pattern revealed a symmetry-breaking event which occurs very early on in embryogenesis and allows for accurate prediction of the orientation of the body axes.
Below is the most spectacular of the movies.
Life Science
Having problems commenting? (UPDATED)