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Happy Holidays, 2014 From Webvision

Luna1

We at Webvision would like to wish you the very best this holiday season.  As in past years, we like to post an image from retinal science that is somehow evocative of the Holiday Season and this year, Gabe Luna from the Steve Fisher / Geoff Lewis laboratory delivers a stunning image of astrocytes in a retinal flat mount, but with a twist… We think you’ll be seeing more of Gabe’s beautiful imagery, but for now, here is his description of how he made this image:

“I used a GFAP-GFP mouse to identify all the astrocytes in the retina and manually (at the time it was manual) annotate their coordinates, then we used a probabilistic random-walk algorithm to go to each “cell center” and perform a segmentation result of that one astrocyte.  Once all the 5,000 or so cells are segmented as a greyscale image of the individual cell, then they are assigned various hues that are spectrally distinct and the montage is re-assembled into one large image.  The image there is a grossly down-sized image of the original.  The original was a seamless mosaic of 412 individual z-stacks of about 15 planes at 1 micron intervals, using a 40x oil immersion lens.”

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Astrocytes and Vasculature

This laser confocal image shows a GFP transgenic mouse retina under the control of the GFAP promoter stained with anti-Collagen IV (blue), anti-GFAP (red) and anti-GFP (green).  These labels not only show the spatial relationship of individual astrocytes to one another, but also the vasculature.   Image provided by Gabriel Luna out of the Steve Fisher and Geoff Lewis’s retinal cell biology group at UC Santa Barbara Neuroscience Research Institute.

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Retinal Half Mosaic

This beautiful image is another by Gabriel Luna out of Steve Fisher and Geoff Lewis’s retinal cell biology group at UC Santa Barbara Neuroscience Research Institute that shows a small mosaic of the outer plexiform layer in mouse retina stained with anti-Calbindin D (green; horizontal cells) PNA (red; cone terminals) and GFP for bipolar cells (blue).  I love the regular order that the retina shows, yet its beauty and regularity belie the complexity that is present.

 

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Optic Nerve Head

Another amazing image sent to us by Gabriel Luna out of the Steve Fisher and Geoff Lewis’s retinal cell biology group at UC Santa Barbara Neuroscience Research Institute.  This image is of the optic nerve head of a normal mouse retina displaying the “glial tubes” formed by the astrocytic network (anti-GFAP; red).  Anti-GFP (green) and anti-Collagen IV (blue) which were used to determine numbers of astrocytes and relative locations in relation to blood vessels.

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Nerve Fiber Layer (Nikon Small World Winner)

This years Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition features some amazing work including this laser confocal image of a mouse nerve fiber layer on a retinal flatmount at 40X magnification by Gabriel Luna out of the Steve Fisher and Geoff Lewis’s retinal cell biology group at UC Santa Barbara Neuroscience Research Institute.

To see all of the images from this year’s competition, Boston.com’s The Big Picture has all of the stunning array of imagery.  Congratulations to Gabe on his efforts and look for more of their fantastic imagery here on Webvision in the near future.

Thanks to The Click for emailing us this link.