Summary of the science
Studying the development of embryos at early stages is difficult because of the small scales involved and that subtle changes may be happening that cannot be seen. Microscopes are needed that show the cells at very high detail and the Huisken Lab works to create these microscopes and apply them in their team of engineers and biologists. They also hope to create a system where their microscopes can be freely shared between other researchers.
About the research
The Huisken Lab work on the interface of physics and biology, developing non-invasive imaging tools that can be applied in developmental research. Organogenesis in zebrafish is a particular research interest to the lab and they are perfecting an optical microscopy platform that can dynamically visualise a living, growing zebrafish embryo, to see how its cells change and create patterns over real time. They are currently developing an open-source platform for other scientists to use their microscopy technology: Flamingo.
About the illustration
The Huisken Lab develop microscopes that can visualise at high resolution but also be used to simultaneously view multiple cells, to observe variation. We therefore wanted to show two main concepts in the illustration: visualisation at different scales and variability. So we came up with this concept of different planes across a cell with mock ups of an image produced by a microscope, showing that their technology maintains resolution at all scales but there is also variation in how the organelles may be placed at any one time.