Michael Peres

Jan Martinek

Derek Sung

Julien Resseguier

Igor Siwanowicz

Karl Gaff

Andy Moore

Matt Tyska

Cell

Intestine, Digestion, Villi, Mouse

Praying Mantis, Macrophotography 

Cytoskeleton

Microtubules, Cytoskeleton, Cellular Structure

Intermediate Filaments

HeLa Cell

Actin

Bladderwort

Plants

Aquatic Plants

Carnivorous Plant

Brine Shrimp 

Gills

Invertebrates

Appendages 

Cane Fly 

Labrum 

Insects

Damselfly

Photoreceptors

Visual System

Musculoskeletal System

Diving Beetle

Predator

Beetle

Larva

Development 

Dobsonfly

Sexual Dimorphism 

Mandibles

Dung Beetle

Jumping Spider

Eyes 

Nuclei

Spider

Neuron 

Growth Cone

Neuronal Targeting

Bovine Cells 

DNA 

Mitochondria

Cells 

Cell Division

Depth Coding

Heart Cell

Cardio Vascular System

Sarcomere

Cell Migration

Myosin

Nucleus

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell

Cancer

Chromosomes

Keratocyte

Fish 

Nervous System

Golgi Apparatus 

Cell Death

Kidney

Glomerulus

Excretory System

Organoid

Blood Vessel

Circulatory System

Cardiovascular System

Neurons

Dorsal Root Ganglion 

Collecting Duct 

Nephrons

Liver

Digestive System

Optic Lobe

Central Nervous System

Synapse 

Villi

Intestine

Intestinal Membrane

Microtubules

Glia

Central Vein

Fruit Fly

Drosophila

Calcium

Legs

Barnacle

Slime Mold

Microbes

Reproduction

Breast

Reptile

Skin

Foot

Fungus

Spore

Multinucleated

Vimentin

Desmid

While this image might look like a multicolored tile floor, it is actually a cross section through the fingerlike bumps on the intestinal wall called villi. The cells within the villi, which you can see here as multicolored circles within the purple or blue outlines, are very important for the proper function of the intestine as a whole.

An Intestinal Mosaic

This little mantis looks as if it might be posing for Instagram. However, with its wings extended like this, it is actually getting ready to defend itself.

Demure Mantis

You may think of the small intestine as a smooth tube that winds its way through your abdomen. But if you were to look really closely at the inside of the intestine, you would see that it is lined with thousands of tiny fingerlike bumps that are designed to increase the surface area of the intestine’s inner wall. These bumps are called villi, and they play an important role in absorbing nutrients into your bloodstream to keep you healthy.

Livin’ la Villi Loca

These multicolored cells are from the liver of a mouse; the liver is one of the most functionally diverse organs. These cells are responsible for filtering the blood, as well as producing important substances that aid in digestion, metabolism, and much more.

Lively Liver 

This dark chasm looks like a hole in the center of a brightly colored tapestry, but it’s actually a central vein in the liver of a mouse.  The liver is like a very efficient sewage treatment plant for the body; it’s where toxic substances are removed and useful ones are recycled. Blood from the rest of the body passes through this vein to be processed by the liver cells that surround the vein.

Liver Central

What would you see if you peered inside a human small intestine? Here’s a glimpse at its structure, revealing a community of cells with different functions.

A Glimpse into the Intestine

This may look like a giant supernova in space, but it’s actually a microscopic image of cytoskeletal proteins and DNA in the metaphase stage of cell division. You can see two of the main proteins that make up the cell’s cytoskeleton – actin (in red and orange) and tubulin (in white) – as well as the cell’s DNA packed into its chromosomes (in blue).

A Snapshot of Cell Division 

This colorful image of a fruit fly eye highlights the organization of the fly’s visual system. Eyes like these are great at sensing motion but are not as good as human eyes at providing a detailed view of the world.&nbsp;

Eye on the Fly

Like Native American dreamcatchers made of strings stretched across a rigid frame, the cells in our body contain various ropelike structural elements – like these intermediate filaments of a protein called vimentin – that protect, support, and shape our cells.

Vimentin Dreamcatcher

It may surprise you to learn that cells have skeletons, too – a cytoskeleton. However, a cell’s skeleton is not made of bones but of a specific set of proteins that form filaments and fibers within the cell to give it structure. In this image, you can see two of the main types of proteins that compose a cytoskeleton: actin and tubulin.

Cytoskeleton Crew

Spiders move around their webs by walking along the strands of silk. Similarly, cells use a network of molecular “highways” called microtubules to move cellular and molecular components around. This image shows a “map” of these highways in several adjacent cells.

Cellular Spiderwebs 

It may look here as if aliens are landing. But this fleet isn’t extraterrestrial. These are desmids – microscopic, single-celled green algae that live in aquatic environments like swamps.

Desmid Delegation

Fun fact: The hexagon is the most common shape in nature. The hexagons in this image are in the eye of a dragonfly. Each hexagonal rod, called an ommatidium, contains major structures that have analogues/counterparts in our own eyes.

Eye of the Dragonfly

Imagine if your foot looked like this. Shoe shopping would be a nightmare! But this is the foot of a diving beetle, and fortunately diving beetles don’t need shoes, as their legs and feet are perfectly designed for both swimming and mating.

Foot of the Diver

The faceoff between these two fiery-looking groups of chromosomes represents a key part of cell division – the process that cells undergo when they divide to make more cells. These images show a stage of cell division called anaphase, in which a cell pulls two sets of its DNA (one set newly copied) to the cell’s opposite ends.

Illuminating Anaphase 

This blazing, writhing orb is the cytoskeleton of a cell. Cells are constantly in flux. The motion in this video is caused by a structural protein called actin, which organizes into rope-like arrangements that help a cell hold its shape and, in some cases, move.

Sunshine on the Cytoskeleton

Take a look inside the bladder of an aquatic bladderwort plant. You can see the single-celled algae, called desmids, that it has consumed. They will be digested to provide the plant with needed nutrients.

Inside a Bladderwort’s Belly

Try not to fall into the gaping maw of this aquatic plant known as a bladderwort. If a small organism touches the trigger hairs on the “trapdoor” shown in this image, a quick flow of water sucks the prey into the plant’s trap.

Open Your Trap

Ever seen legs like these? You’re looking at the legs of a brine shrimp, also known as a sea monkey. But these are not just ordinary legs. As brine shrimp rhythmically beat their legs, they are using these appendages to simultaneously move, eat, and breathe.

Briny Swimmers

Crane flies generally do not eat once they’re adults, but they do drink – and this labrum, or mouthpart, of a crane fly is well adapted to a liquid diet. Although crane flies look like giant mosquitoes, you can ease your mind knowing that they don’t bite.

Labrum Spectrum 

This intricate structure of blue rods and red dots is a cross section through the eye of a damselfly. Insects’ compound eyes are structured very differently than the eyes of humans and other mammals, but there are some similarities in the basic components of the two kinds of eyes.

Inside a Damselfly Eye

This cross section through the flight muscles of a dancer damselfly shows in blue the muscle fibers that the fly uses to flap its wings. You can also see the nerve that stimulates these muscles in red.

Muscles on the Fly

These dung beetles bring home balls of dung for food. The three small males pictured here each have a pair of long horns so they can go head-to-head when competing for females. Because dung beetles feed on manure, they are valuable for cleaning pastures.

Put on Your Dungarees

This cross section through the head of a jumping spider shows off the interior structure of four of its eight eyes. Jumping spiders have the most acute vision of any terrestrial invertebrate. In fact, their ability to perceive detail almost matches that of humans, and they accomplish that feat with eyes that are only a tiny fraction of the size of our eyeball.

Getting Into a Spider’s Head 

This jumping spider appears to be staring at you with four giant eyes, but it actually has eight eyes around the top of its cephalothorax (head and upper body). While the largest pair of eyes provides very acute color vision, the three smaller pairs of eyes offer a less detailed, monochromatic, panoramic view.

Jumping Spider Focus 

These blue branches are the microtubules of developing neurons from a sea snail in the genus Aplysia. And the purple “fringe” on their ends are growth cones, which allow the neurons to grow in the proper direction toward their targets throughout the body.

Purple is the Color of Progress

This is a image of a cell that is nearing the end of the multistep cell division process. At this point, the parent cell is about to pinch off its cell membrane (at the center of the image), which will result in two daughter cells.

Long Division

This cell cluster may look jumbled, but it is well organized. Called a glomerulus, it’s a cluster of cells from a kidney; it filters and processes blood to maintain proper levels of water, salt, and minerals. It also removes toxins from the blood so they can be expelled in urine.

Blue-Green Glomerulus 

These barnacle legs look like a brush that might be used by a chimney sweep. Often attached to ships, barnacles use their hairy legs to comb through the water to collect organisms, mostly microscopic invertebrates, to eat.

Brush Me, Barnacle

This looks like it could be a cartoon rendering of deer antlers, but it’s actually the growing tip of red algae, an organism that thrives in salt water near coral reefs or in tide pools.

Here’s a Tip for You

In this image, red is the color of absorption. The red cells in this image are enterocytes, which line the walls of your small intestine and are responsible for absorbing nutrients from the food you eat, thanks to projections in the intestinal wall called villi.

All About Absorption

Skin is pretty amazing. It is our largest organ, accounting for about 15% of our body weight. It protects our insides from the outside world, cools us off, and keeps us warm. To keep it intact, the body uses a complex network of support.

Skin Networks

There is an undeniable connection between a pregnant individual and their fetus, an unseen bond that is difficult for anyone who has not experienced it to understand. And here we can see that there is also a physical bond with a fetus that develops in the placenta during pregnancy.

The Tapestry of Life

Even cellular components need good roads to travel along. This image shows key components of the cytoskeletal road map labeled in red, blue, and green.

Cytoskeletal Highways 

This cross section through several mouse testes shows how sperm are made and maintained.

Tending the Testes 

This is neither an award nor a sculpture. It’s the fruiting body of a slime mold – a structure that helps the slime mold reproduce and spread. Fruiting bodies contain spores that are released into the environment and have the potential to start a new slime mold colony of their own.

Award-Winning Slime

How does a breast release milk for a baby to drink? The cells you see in this image wrap around groups of milk-producing cells in the breast. These cells can contract to force milk into the network of ducts that collect and eventually funnel milk to the nipple.

Cell Squeezers

Researchers create organoids, like this breast organoid, so they can study the structure and function of organs and tissues in a lab.

Ovation for Organoids

Look inside the foot of a gecko and you’ll see a structure that’s perfect for grasping almost any surface. Geckos’ ability to move in any direction in an instant gives them a leg up when they’re hunting insects or escaping from predators.

Grasp of a Gecko

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how a fungus reproduces, let alone about what the process might look like. But here you can see a network of soil fungus, with a reproductive spore at the center of the image.

Spore Spotting

This haunting image of a newly discovered organ offers unique insight into how fish protect their gills. This organ harbors immune cells that help fight infection and clear debris.

A Specter in the Gills

To figure out how our brains form as we grow, researchers study what is happening in each individual cell. Here, you can see several neurons from a mouse during the process of development.

Neurons in Development 

Stem cells can specialize, or differentiate, into many different types of cells. This is a snapshot of a group of marmoset embryonic stem cells in the process of differentiating into neurons.

A Multitude of Possibilities

Just like neurons in a brain, neurons growing in a petri dish will reach out to connect with each other. This network of green and purple starbursts shows a group of nerve cells isolated from an embryonic rat.

Early Nerves in the Spine

Every process has a beginning and end, but sometimes the middle segment is the most interesting. This is an image of a neural stem cell in the midst of the process of differentiating into a neuron.

Mid-Transformation

During development, cells move around all the time, but we rarely get a good look at such movement. This video tracks the migration of cells in a developing zebrafish – some of which will be part of the sensory system through which it perceives water movement and some of which will form the dark stripes on its skin.

Migration While Developing

In this zebrafish liver, the blood vessels glitter in gold and the bile ducts gleam in neon blue. This image highlights the close relationship between the circulatory system and the cells of the liver.

Blood and Bile

We rarely see the cells that help defend us from the microorganisms and debris that can cause sickness. Visible as white spots in the interior of these intestinal villi, however, are immune cells called macrophages, which do just that. Macrophages engulf microorganisms like bacteria and viruses that can cause illness and also help clean up microscopic debris that, if left unchecked, could accumulate and cause damage.