A glowing, eerily beautiful image of a water flea with its radiant green “crown of thorns” took top prize in the competition, the world’s foremost forum for showcasing microscope photos and movies of life science subjects. Dr. Jan Michels, a zoologist at the University of Albrecht, Kiel, Germany, took top honors for the image of a water flea, with its defensive “crown of thorns” to protect it against predators.
This year’s winning images reflect the latest advances in neuroscience and cell biology, including the Second Prize image by Chung-Ju Rachel Wang of the University of California, Berkeley. Her image of the nucleus of a corn plant cell shows a ladder-like protein structure called the synaptonemal complex, which forms between chromosomes during one type of cell division.
