Winners: Earth Day Light Microscopy Imaging Competition

Lumencor’s Light Microscopy Imaging Competition celebrates Earth Day by highlighting our commitment to manufacturing sustainable microscope Light Engines that are bright, clean, and mercury-free.

First Place Winner: Dr. Tejeshwar Rao

Fluorescent image of a HUVEC cell generating tension on a 56 pN Tension Gauge Tether surface imaged on a Nikon Ti2 Eclipse microscope. The tension is depicted in BOP blue, paxillin staining in BOP purple and the stained actin cytoskeleton in BOP orange.

A single HUVEC cell with blue fluorescence captured with a SOLA Light Engine

Second Place: Dr. Danaí Montalvan-Sorrosa

Droplet of a
thermotropic liquid crystal mixed with a blue
dye
and
shined with different
intensities of green light from a Spectra X Light Engine

Fig.3. Dyed-agarose beads immersed in a thermotropic liquid crystal. The sample was shined with different intensities of green light from a SPECTRA X Light Engine.

Fig. 1. Droplet of a thermotropic liquid crystal mixed with a red dye
and shined with different intensities of blue light from a Spectra X Light Engine instrument. The experiment was conducted at room temperature and observed with an inverted microscope. The liquid crystal remains in the nematic phase at room temperature. When light is shined, the dye in the mixture absorbs it releasing heat that increases the temperature of the LC. This temperature change induces the phase transition from the nematic phase (red birefringence) to the isotropic phase (black region).
The isotropic area size is controlled by increasing (B to E) or decreasing (F to K) the light’s power.
The phase transition is highly dynamic,
seen as a “bubbling” effect at the nematic isotropic interphase. In the image, the bubbling can be observed in H, I,and J.

Figure 1. Droplet of a thermotropic liquid crystal mixed with a blue dye and shined with different intensities of green light from a SPECTRA X Light Engine.

Figure 2. Dyed polystyrene particles mixed with a thermotropic liquid crystal shined with different intensities of red-light from a SPECTRA X Light Engine.

Figure 3. Dyed-agarose beads immersed in a thermotropic liquid crystal. The sample was shined with different intensities of green light from a SPECTRA X Light Engine.

Figure 4. Droplet of a thermotropic liquid crystal mixed with a red dye and shined with different intensities of blue light from a SPECTRA X Light Engine. The experiment was conducted at room temperature and observed with an inverted microscope.

Third Place: Parthasarathy Raghuveer

Four images of a giant lipid vesicle – a shell of lipid membrane about 20 microns in diameter –phase-separated into cholesterol-rich (dark) and cholesterol-poor (light) domains. Captured with SOLA SM.

Updated

Sep 10, 2021

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Spotlight September 2021(opens in new window)

References