Matthew Kuo tells us how tiny worm faecal pellets affect how oil pipelines sit on the seabed.

Nanowires growing in real time. Each nanowire is roughly 400 atoms wide.

Dr Andrew Gillis explains how an elephant fish embryo lives off a large yellow yolk sack for 7 to 10 months before hatching out as a fish.

Dr Gillis:

“This is a picture of an elephant fish embryo. Elephant fish are cartilaginous fishes, and are distant cousins of sharks, skates and stingrays. The elephant fish lives in deep water off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, but migrates annually into shallow coastal bays to lay their eggs. I study the embryonic development of elephant fish, by collecting their eggs by SCUBA diving at their egg-laying grounds. Normally, an elephant fish embryo will live in their egg and feed off of their yolk supply for 7 to 10 months before hatching out as a completely self-sufficient juvenile. However, these embryos may also be cultured outside of their egg cases, as seen here. This allows us to observe and photograph the development and growth of this unusual fish.”

The diameter of the petri dish in the elephant fish picture is 10cm.

More info:

http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/~jag93

Music by Peter Nickalls:

http://www.peternickalls.com

Many thanks:

Graduate School of Life Sciences

In this video Dr Sungjune Jung shows us the fluid structures produced by the impact of two liquid jets.

Dr Jung:

“This video shows the evolution of the flow structures generated from the collision of two liquid jets each with a radius of 420um. The jets were ejected from parallel cylindrical nozzles with an internal diameter of 0.85mm.

The collision of the jets resulted in various systems of behaviour which depend on the jet velocities and the liquid properties. We focus on the system where the impinging jets form a liquid sheet which then breaks up into a regular succession of ligaments and droplets, a so-called "fishbone" pattern. This high-speed imaging reveals a fish-like formation for the fluid:

the oval sheet with rims correspond to the fish head, the drops on thin ligaments to its body, and bigger free drops at the end to its tail. We are particularly interested in this fluid formation, because the fishbone phenomenon provides a simple and visual tool to evaluate the properties of inkjet printing fluids, with which the fishbone structure sensitively varies."

Many thanks to Prof Ian Hutchings, Dr Graham Martin and Dr Steve Hoath at Inkjet Research Centre, Department of Engineering.

More info:

Dr Jung's profile:

http://www.oe.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/oepdras/sjj37.htm

Inkjet Research Centre

http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/pp/inkjet/

Department of Engineering

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/

Music by Intercontinental Music Lab

http://www.intercontinentalmusiclab.com

This is a beautiful image of human brain cells, which can now be grown from adult skin cells.

Yichen Shi:

"Brain neural stem cells derived from human skin cells: these stem cells express typical marker genes of brain neocortical stem cells, such as Pax6 (Red fluorescent labeled), and form a rosette structure resembling the transection of the neural tube."

The entire image is about 250 μm across (a really thick bit of human hair).

More info:

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/brain-cells-created-from-patients-skin-cells

Picture taken by Yichen Shi in the Livesey Lab

http://www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/~liveseylab/fjlhome/index.html

Voice over by Fred Lewsey.

Music by Peter Nickalls: http://www.peternickalls.com

PhD student Paola Cognigni shows us this beautiful image of a fruit fly’s brain and gut.

Paola Cognigni:

“This video shows the anatomical and functional connection between the brain and the gut in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. This work is carried out in Dr Irene Miguel-Aliaga's lab in the Department of Zoology as part of a research project that aims to find and explain the interactions between internal organs and their importance in growth and health.”

The brain is about 700 microns wide (the entire image is something like

1600 microns across): about the size of a pencil tip.

The image was taken in the Zoology Dept Imaging Facility on a Leica SP5 confocal system.

More info and images:

http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/miguel-aliaga/main.html

Music by Intercontinental Music Lab

http://www.intercontinentalmusiclab.com

Here we can see the underside of mouse tail skin.

Claire Cox:

"The epidermis, which is the outer layer of mammalian skin, is maintained by numerous stem cell populations. The identification of the factors involved in controlling these populations and thus epidermal maintenance is highly valuable. Not only will it provide information as to how a complex tissue is organised and controlled, the principles that are learnt can be applied to other tissues. Through the work that I am completing, I hope that I can also gain a perspective as to what goes wrong in disease processes such as skin cancer. Skin cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in the world, and understanding what goes wrong and the factors involved could potentially lead to new ideas as to prevention and treatment."

The image is 700µm in width - this is about the size of the full stop in this sentence. About 5000 cells would fit on the surface of a full stop.

Many thanks to:

Dr Michaela Frye, Frye Lab members, Peter Humphreys, Margaret McLeish.

More info:

Wellcome Trust Centre For Stem Cell Research

http://www.cscr.cam.ac.uk

Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/

Claire Cox's profile:

http://www.cscr.cam.ac.uk/research/researchers-by-group/frye-lab/claire-cox

Graduate School of Life Sciences and its annual Poster and Image Competitions

http://www.biomed.cam.ac.uk/gradschool/comp/2011/index.html

Music by Peter Nickalls:

http://www.peternickalls.com

Find more Cambridge research here:

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research

Dr Andrew Gillis shows us an embryonic skate head and explains how the red denticles dotted all over it have very similar properties to human teeth.

Dr Gillis:

"This is a picture of the head of an embryonic skate (Leucoraja erinacea). A skate is a cartilaginous fish, closely related to sharks and stingrays. This embryo has been stained with dyes that colour the skeleton - cartilage is blue, and mineralised tissue is red - and then cleared with chemicals to make it transparent. The result is a specimen that shows the complex shape and arrangement of different skeletal tissues during embryonic development. I use this staining procedure to visualise the skeleton following experimental manipulation. This allows me to investigate how different genes and proteins are involved in controlling the formation and growth of different skeletal tissues in these fishes".

The skate image is approximately 3cm across.

More info:

http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/~jag93

Music by Peter Nickalls:

http://www.peternickalls.com

With thanks:

Graduate School of Life Sciences and its annual Poster and Image Competitions

http://www.biomed.cam.ac.uk/gradschool/comp/2011/index.html

Matt Benton shows us nuclei moving inside a beetle egg as a beetle embryo forms.

Matt Benton:

“For my PhD I am studying the embryonic development of the beetle, Tribolium castaneum. During development in this beetle, a large number cells must move together at a certain location of the egg to form the embryo proper. At the same time, other cells move to overlap the forming embryo, to protect it and help it grow. Currently, we only have a basic understanding of how these different groups of cells move. In my work I am trying to extend this understanding, and to learn how the movements of different groups of cells are controlled and coordinated. Together with the group of Michalis Averof, I am developing methods to allow the movements of these cells to be seen in live embryos. The beetle shown in this video has been genetically modified so that the nucleus of each cell is labelled with a fluorescent protein. By using a certain microscope, I am able to record the movements of these cells in 3D, as the embryo develops.

Many thanks to Michalis Averof for creating the nuclear-green fluorescent protein transgenic line shown in the movie, and to my PhD supervisor, Michael Akam, for supporting my work.”

The width of this egg is 300 micrometres, and the length is 600 micrometres (1 metre is 1,000,000 micrometres). So the width of this egg is roughly 3 times the width of a human hair.

The time span of the movie is about 5.5 hours.

Matt Benton’s profile:

http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/akam/benton.html

Music by Sophie Smith:

http://www.sophieasmith.co.uk

In this video Dr Ingrid Graz shows us a thin layer of gold on top of rubber. Cracks in the gold allow it to stretch and we can use this for stretchable electronics.

Dr Graz:

“Imagine a future mobile phone that can be wrapped around your wrist or an MP3 player that is integrated in your T-shirt. Stretchable electronics is a new evolution of electronics - the idea behind is to create electronic devices that can be rolled, flexed, deformed and even stretch like a rubber band. To enable stretchable electronics we use rubber such as silicone coated with a very thin layer of gold. The gold serves as stretchable conductor and can be elongated to twice its original length without electrical failure. The secret behind the stretchability lies within the microstructure. Tiny cracks in the film open up when it is stretched without damaging the film. This image shows a silicone rubber with a gold layer and an additional silicone layer to protect the electrode.”

The image is about 3x3mm.

Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge:

http://www.nanoscience.cam.ac.uk

Department of Engineering:

www.eng.cam.ac.uk

Music by Peter Nickalls:

http://www.peternickalls.com