We congratulate Hari for being awarded the first prize in a photo competition organized by the JSMC! The event took place in the Zeiss Planetarium Jena, the oldest projection planetarium of its type.
The story behind the winning photo is the following.
Hotline for amoebae — a microscopic delivery system
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Social amoebae, including Dictyostelium discoideum, are protists that play a crucial role in shaping natural microbial communities and are often used as a non-mammalian model system to understand several metazoan biological processes. While intercellular communication in these organisms predominantly occurs in a paracrine manner, the presence of direct physical connection remains poorly characterized. The winning image shows two D. discoideum cells connected by actin-rich membrane protrusions known as tunneling nanotubes (TNT) that enable cargo transport between the cells. Live-cell imaging was performed on D. discoideum, which co-expressed fluorescent markers for actin (green) and endomembrane organelles (violet). Hence, amoebae can use nanotubes to establish direct physical connections for the transport of cargo between cells. |
Moreover, one of Hari’s FISH images was used as an end credit image for the short film “Into the Microverse“.
