GLIMmer of Life

This brightly coloured ball is a cow embryo, except it’s not...not really. Like many microscopy pictures, this is a reconstruction of how light falls on something tiny. Sometimes though, pictures from inside living tissue can be fuzzy, because light bounces around inside creating a sort of 'cloud'. Here, gradient light interference microscopy (GLIM) aims gentle pulses of laser light at different depths in the embryo, piecing together a set of pictures into a detailed 3D model. Researchers sliced the top off this virtual embryo so they can peer inside at the earliest stages of life, spotting any problems. GLIM could be a gentle and safe way for predicting which human embryos are most suitable for in vitro fertilisation, raising the chance of conceiving for millions of hopeful couples.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

Website

• Image courtesy of Gabriel Popescu
• Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Published in Nature Communications, August 2017