UC San Diego Health Sciences News

Science visualized

In mitosis, a eukaryotic cell divides itself to form two daughter cells, each genetically identical to the parent. It’s a process fundamental to life, but obviously difficult to see. In the top image above, Andrew Noske, a post-doctoral researcher at UC San Diego’s National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research and colleagues capture a mitotic moment in exquisite, accurate detail.

The three-dimensional, electron micrograph depicts green-yellow chromosomes separating in a dividing cancer cell, the genetic material highlighted by a tiny, fusable marking protein called mini-SOG, developed by Nobel laureate Roger Tsien with colleagues at UC San Diego and the NCMIR (The protein’s structure is shown in the extended ribbon diagram).

The image earned Noske (with colleagues Mark Ellisman and Thomas Deerinck at NCMIR and Clodagh O’Shea and Horng Ou at the Salk Institute) a People’s Choice award for illustration at the ninth annual International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science. The image is printed in tomorrow’s print issue of Science and on its website. It can also be seen on the NSF website. An explanatory video can be seen here. Noske submitted three entries in the contest. All three were finalists.

In the video category, Noske with Graham Johnson at The Scripps Research Institute and Bradley Marsh at the University of Queensland in Australia took first place and the People’s Choice for an animation that inventories and compares complex biological structures in a rapid and novel way. It can be viewed here.

Noske and Eric Bushong of NCMIR also placed among the finalists for their 3D electron micrograph of a neuron, depicted in the second image above.