Picture of the month
March 2023
The Human Dotted Blood Factory
This is where everything starts, where all your blood cells come from: Bone Marrow. This dotted human blood factory engulfs your stem cells and gives rise to your immune and red blood cells to help in carrying oxygen and building the immune system. These stem cells are heavily supported by adipocytes or fat cells (red round wholes) filling the marrow whole
This Immunofluorescence image is a multiplex full slide scan of a human bone marrow tissue biopsy. This image was acquired using a slide scanner (Olympus VS120 slide scanner using a UPLSAPO 20x/0.75 objective). Each color corresponds to a cell surface biomarker specific for a bone marrow cell population: hematopoietic cells (give rise to all blood cells) (green), adipocytes or fat cells (red), perivascular cells (blood vessels)(yellow), reticular cells (pink), and nucleated cells (blue/DAPI). We observe the beautiful heterogeneity within the human bone marrow and the spatial distribution of the hematopoietic niche cells with respect to the hematopoietic cells.
Rita Sarkis, PhD Student, Laboratory of System Biology and Genetics (EPFL) and Laboratory of Regenerative Hematopoiesis (UNIL).
February 2023
Precious Network
Primary hippocampal neurons growing on a single-crystal diamond chip. The surface is nanostructured with pillars having a diameter of 200nm and a height of 1 µm. The image is acquired after cells fixation and Au/Pd sputtering. SEM microscope (field emission scanning electron microscope, Zeiss Merlin, Gemini II column).
Elena Losero, Scientist, Laboratory of Quantum and Nano-Optics
January 2023
Side view of the wirebonding of the LinoSPAD chip, a reconfigurable camera sensor with a single-photon avalanche diode pixel array.
Edoardo Charbon, Professor, Advanced Quantum Architecture Laboratory
December 2022
This image is a 3D rendering for a 3D phantom (an artificial structure designed to emulate properties of the human body) that was fabricated by one of our lab members at the Optics Laboratory and imaged using my experimental setup. The field of view is approximately 60 um (0,06 mm) and the lateral resolution is in the range of hundreds of nanometers.
Ahmed Ayoub, PhD Student, Optics Laboratory