Honorable Mention: Action of the Heart
Michael Weber, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany
Subject: Beating heart of a living 2-day-old Danio rerio (zebrafish)
Magnification: 20x
Technique: Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM)
The heart muscle cells of this transgenic fish expresses GCaMP, a genetically encoded fluorescent calcium indicator. Visible is the wave of cardiac conduction, traveling over the heart from atrium (bottom) to ventricle (top left). The heart has a size of about 250 um and beats at a rate of about two times per second. It was imaged in 3D inside the living zebrafish using Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) (Huisken et al. 2004).
