Honorable Mention: Ellipsoid Egg Development
Saori Haigo, University of California, Berkeley; University of California, San Francisco, USA
Technique: Live cell imaging of Drosophila egg chambers (3-hour time lapse movie at 5-minute intervals)
Magnification: 400X
Some animals, including insects and birds, are known to lay ellipsoid eggs, but how does the ellipsoid form during egg development? Using the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, developing eggs were dissected out of the female ovary with muscles removed, to watch how elongating eggs behave ex vivo. It turns out that developing eggs undergoing elongation (the two egg chambers in the lower left), spin around its long axis. Green highlights the surface follicle epithelium's cell membranes; red marks all nuclei.