Physiology Image Gallery

Communications, Corporate

June 29, 2021

Physiology Image Gallery

Exploring activities and functions of organism’s organs, tissues, or cells

C. elegans Gonades - THUNDER Imager Adult hermaphrodit, Staining: blue - DAPI (Nucleus), green - SP56 (sperms), red - RME-2 (oocyte), mangenta - PGL-1 (RNA + protein granules) Image courtesy of Prof. Dr. Christian Eckmann, Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany THUNDER-Imager_C-elegans_Gonades_Physiology_3600.jpg

Physiology is about the processes and functions within a living organism. Research in physiology focuses on the activities and functions of an organism’s organs, tissues, or cells, including the physical and chemical phenomena involved. Here we show you images related to physiology using different samples as examples.

Physiology Images taken with THUNDER Imagers

See how Leica Microsystems instruments can help imaging cardiac organoids used to develop pacemaker cells for heart arrhythmias, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, sensory hair cell regeneration, cellular eye morphogenesis, retina and the vascular network, the Drosophila eye, HeLa cells, zebrafish heart, etc. There are different model organisms and specimens involved in this collection, such as chicken, mice, C. elegans, Drosophila, zebrafish, Arabidopsis thaliana, and HeLa cells.

Cardiac Spheroids

Vesicle formation, movement, and fusion

This video shows how observation of intracellular membrane trafficking along microtubules is enhanced with THUNDER Computational Clearing. Shown is a time-lapse movie of living HeLa cells transfected with Rab5a-GFP and stained with SIR-Tubulin. Vesicle formation, movement, and fusion can be observed.

Vesicle formation, movement, and fusion. Time-lapse movie of living HeLa cells transfected with Rab5a-GFP (green) and stained with SIR-Tubulin (red). Video courtesy of Oliver Schlicker, Leica Microsystems, Wetzlar, Germany.

Zebrafish Heart

HeLa Cells

HeLa cells stained with the live cell dye SIR-Tubulin. The video shows a direct comparison of widefield and TIRF illumination plus how different THUNDER methods (here ICC and LVCC) improve even more the contrast impression in the images. TIRF was performed using a THUNDER Imager Live Cell with Infinity TIRF by using the 638nm Laser line and 110nm penetration depth. Timelapse and recording was done over 5 minutes. A small Z-Stack was recorded to gain enough data for THUNDER LVCC (stacksize: 1µm, 5 planes). Courtesy of Dr. Oliver Schlicker, Leica Microsystems

Mouse Retina

Dr. Jiyeon Lee, a scientist at Roche Genentech in South San Francisco, CA uses the mouse retina model to study the interaction between endothelial cells, blood vessels, and astrocytesin the retina. Dr. Lee uses whole mount retina preparation to visualize its vasculature. Following fixation and staining, the whole retina must be imaged at high resolution to provide an overview of the whole vascular network, as well as single cell interactions.

Arabidopsis Thaliana Root

Arabidopsis thaliana root; Early endosome marker protein (fused to GFP); Maximum projected Z-stack over time Image courtesy: Prof. Dr. Karin Schumacher, Centre for Organismal Studies Heidelberg (COS), Germany

Murine Esophageal Organoids

Adult Drosophila Muscle

Adult Drosophila muscle. Actin (Phalloidin-Cy3, red), Mitochondria (mito-GFP, green). Video courtesy of Prof. Jieqiong Tan, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, China.

Mouse Lens Section

This slide is a transversal Mouse adult lens section showing the fiber lens cells organization (green, stained with anti-β-catenin antibody (BDB610153), a membrane protein) and Afadin (red, stained with anti-Afadin (PA1-25076), an actin filament-binding protein, blue, Hoechst). Image courtesy of Dr. Nathalie Houssin, Plagemen Lab, Ohio State University, USA. — This slide is a transversal Mouse adult lens section showing the fiber lens cells organization (green, stained with anti-β-catenin antibody (BDB610153), a membrane protein) and Afadin (red, stained with anti-Afadin (PA1-25076), an actin filament-binding protein, blue, Hoechst). Imaged with a THUNDER Imager 3D Cell Culture. Image courtesy of Dr. Nathalie Houssin, Plagemen Lab, Ohio State University, USA.

C. elegans Gonades

Adult hermaphrodit, Staining: blue - DAPI (Nucleus), green - SP56 (sperms), red - RME-2 (oocyte), mangenta - PGL-1 (RNA + protein granules). Image courtesy of Prof. Dr. Christian Eckmann, Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany.

Chicken Cochlea Tilescan

Dr. Amanda Janesick, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Stefan Heller, studies the development and regeneration of the inner ear, specifically the sensory hair cells, which serve a mechanosensitive purpose in the inner ear. Dr. Janesick uses the chicken embryo as a model to study sensory hair cell regeneration, because of the ability of chickens to naturally recover from hearing loss.

Dr. Janesick uses thick vibratome sections of post-hatch 7 day chicken cochlear tissue to visualize the sensory hair cells in the inner ear. Typically, this is a challenging sample for widefield fluorescence microscopes, due to the haze inherent to thicker tissue samples, which obscures structures of interest (Figure 1, left panel). Using a THUNDER Imager 3D Tissue, the haze and background was cleared from this image using Instant Computational Clearing (ICC, Figure 1, right panel), making it suitable for observation of individual sensory hair cells (magenta) and supporting cells (yellow) of the inner ear. This 3-channel 10-position tilescan took under a minute to acquire and process with ICC. Because ICC is a 2D method, and does not require z-stacks, it could be applied to this single plane tilescan.

Chicken cochlea tilescan imaged on a THUNDER 3D Tissue Imager. The raw epifluorescence image is on the left, and the result of Instant Computational Clearing is on the right. This 43 µm thick vibratome section of a post-hatch day 7 chicken cochlea was stained with a nuclear DAPI stain (cyan), antibodies for Myosin 7a labeling sensory hair cells (magenta), and Sox2 labeling supporting cells (yellow). 40x oil immersion objective (NA 1.3) was used to acquire this 10-position tilescan.

Transgenic Drosophila Photoreceptors of the Eye

Transgenic Drosophila photoreceptors of the eye with EGFP labeled rhabdomeres under the control of the rhodopsin 1 promoter (ninaE-EGFP). Imaged with a THUNDER Imager 3D Cell Culture. Courtesy of Navid Nouri, Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, California, USA.

Pancreatic Islet

A better understanding of how type 1 diabetes (T1D) develops is the first step to potentially develop new therapies capable of preventing or permanently reversing the disease. Due to the inaccessibility to human pancreatic tissue, our knowledge of the disease in humans is limited. The Network for Pancreatic Organ donors with Diabetes (nPOD) was established with the idea of providing valuable tissues from healthy and diabetic donors toanswer basic questions about the pathogenesis of T1D. One of the interests of the von Herrath lab is toidentifycytokines in the pancreatic tissue samples of T1D cases obtained from nPOD. Since T1D is an autoimmune disease, where insulin producing pancreatic beta cells are attacked by the immune system, understanding the cytokine milieu in the pancreas of T1D will lead to a better understanding of the disease pathogenesis and contribute towards development of therapeutic targets for T1D.