This image shows a lumbar vertebra from a mouse with its back to the upper-left and its belly to the lower-right. There are muscle fibers in the upper-left corner, cartilage in blue merging into bone in green at the ends of the vertebra, red blood cells in the middle and intestinal contents in orange in the bottom-right corner. The image, which won 13th place in the Nikon Small World Contest, was captured by Dr. Michael Paul Nelson in the Division of Neuropathology, part of the Department of Pathology within the UAB School of Medicine. Dr. Nelson says he created this image, not for a specific research goal, but instead to help him understand aspects of mammalian anatomy. The tissue sample in the image was prepared with a series of dyes and was revealed when Dr. Nelson switched his microscope to fluorescent mode.
When he took the image, Dr. Nelson was attending the Immunohistochemistry and Microscopy Short Course offered by the Histochemical Society at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA. Also credited for the Nikon content entry was Samantha Smith, the representative from Carl Zeiss Microscopy who helped Dr. Nelson with technical aspects of using a Zeiss microscope.
That is a stunning image! Superb work, Dr. Nelson!
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