Neurophilosophy

Zebrafish brainbow bioscape

Posted by Mo on November 19, 2008
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zebrafish_brainbow_bioscape-1.jpg

This beautiful image of the brain of a 5-day-old zebrafish larva, which was created by Albert Pan of Harvard University, has just won 4th place in the 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging competition. (See a larger version here.)

It was created using the Brainbow technique, a genetic method for labelling neurons, with which individual cells can be made to express a random combination of fluorescent proteins. An image of a mouse brainstem labelled using the same method was awarded 1st prize in last year’s competition.

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Comments

  1. #1 CopperKettle
    November 19, 2008

    Charming; posted a link.

  2. #2 Luci
    November 19, 2008

    An electric violin, zebrafish style. The photographer could change his surname to Panchromatic.
    The aesthetic element maintained here is only one of the reasons to visit, but not a minor one. It may not be optogenetic therapy, but it is optic therapy to be surprised by images of amazing and beautiful realities.

  3. #3 AfitV
    November 20, 2008

    Yeah…stuff like this is why I hate it when people maintain that “biology is just applied chemistry.” While entirely composed of chemistry and physics, nothing in either discipline hints at the exquisite complexity that biology doles out in droves, thanks to it’s patron saint / chief apostle / god-emperor, evolution. Evolution alone can beat back entropy and disorder with the metal baseball bat of statistics…at least for a while…and stuff like this proves it.