Spiny Vessels
If blood in a living mouse is red, how come these blood vessels in a mouse’s spinal cord are multicolored? The answer lies in a research technique: scientists filled the vessels with a fluorescent gel so they could see the structure and organization of this complex network in the spinal cord.
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DownloadSpiny Vessels
If blood in a living mouse is red, how come these blood vessels in a mouse’s spinal cord are multicolored? The answer lies in a research technique: scientists filled the vessels with a fluorescent gel so they could see the structure and organization of this complex network in the spinal cord.
What am I looking at?
This image shows the intricate network of blood vessels in a mouse’s spinal cord. The image is depth coded for color – elements shown in cooler colors like blue and green (1) are closer to the viewer and those in warmer colors like red and yellow (2) are farther away from the viewer.
Biology in the background
The spinal cord passes along all the information sent from the brain out to the body and receives all the information coming from the body back to the brain. This means the nerves in the spinal cord form a wildly complex network with tissues all over the body to handle all the information flowing through them. The blood vessels that supply nutrients and oxygen to the cells of the spinal cord are organized to maximize the delivery of nutrients to this complex network of nerves.
The central vein in a mouse spinal cord is about 14 micrometers across, or roughly five times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Technique
This image was created using confocal microscopy and tissue clearing.
Andrea Tedeschi, Ohio State University Medical Center