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A Science Game
07 June 2014

A Science Game

Two thousand online gamers in 100 countries have helped biologists to draw a 3D image of the tangle of different nerve fibres (shown in different colours) in the retina of mouse eye. Each gamer received a raw 3D image made up of electron microscope scans of a small volume of the retina, and earned points by highlighting speedily and accurately the route individual nerve fibres took, starting at the nerve's hub (coloured blobs). Crowdsourcing the painstaking job saved the researchers years of drudgery and shed light on a 50-year-old mystery about how retinal cells detect the direction of movement. The 3D image revealed an elaborate layout that allows two types of retinal cells, the spoke-hub-shaped starburst amacrine cell and bipolar cells, to collaborate so that a moving image triggers an electric signal exclusively when the motion direction is aligned with the axis of one of the spokes of the cell.

Written by Tristan Farrow

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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.