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Life in HD
07 December 2012

Life in HD

High definition televisions make everything look sharp and crisp – individual blades of grass sway on football fields, the occasional hair might be spotted on a celebrity’s chin. So just imagine what our insides might look like in HD. Here, a technique called Structured Illumination Microscopy was used to sharpen-up the textures of a single human cell. Hundreds of low-resolution images were taken from slightly different angles, then reconstructed into a high-resolution image to reveal tiny hidden structures. Rather than appearing as a blur, we can see individual ‘bones’ in the cytoplasm’s skeleton. Each microtubule, highlighted here in green, is 50,000 times smaller than a human rib and works to protect the cell’s precious energy factories, the mitochondria, highlighted in pink. One can only wonder about the future - what other hidden details might be revealed by pulling the world inside us into focus?

Written by John Ankers

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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BPoD is also available in Catalan at www.bpod.cat with translations by the University of Valencia.