Spend enough time with your eyes glued to a microscope and you will happen upon some beautiful structure, cell or circuit. 51¶¯Âþs who work at the nanoscale often create and manipulate their experiments to make them even more appealing to the eye. It is in this vein that the journal has created a Flickr page, . Here are a few of our favourites.
Microvalves chatting at sunset
Reflected light creates a prism that shines through a microfluidic chip that would otherwise be transparent. When at work, the chip rests over a live cell culture and pipes proteins or drugs onto them through the round openings, which are about one-tenth of a millimetre wide. The squares around the apertures control the flow.
(Image: Chris Sip and Albert Folch/University of Washington)
The day that Mondrian visited the lab
Chris Sip and Albert Folch’s chip has an air of , whose approach to his art has often been compared to science. The liquid-filled tubes echo the vertical and horizontal grid lines of his paintings.
In this image, channels on different planes of a chip are filled with differing concentrations of a blue dye. In practice, the channels deliver chemicals to neurons, and were created to mimic the way neurons set up connections in a developing nervous system.
(Image: Chris Sip and Albert Folch/University of Washington)
Chromatic mixer
Moving liquids, even in tiny amounts, can disturb growing cells. This chip gets around the problem by piping a solution beneath cells that grow on a porous membrane, which is the square structure in this montage of a single chip and three digitally manipulated copies; the lower right panel is the original. Two solutions, in yellow and blue, flow from the lower chamber into the membrane, where they make a chemical gradient that diffuses to the cells.
(Image: David Cate and Albert Folch/University of Washington)
Neurons looking at you
In miniature cell-culture devices such as this one, the growth of neurons – in fluorescent green – can be controlled by coating the device with adhesion proteins – in red – that latch onto cells. This set-up allows researchers to determine how drugs or other treatments affect the cells.
Journal reference:
(Image: Xavier Figueroa and Albert Folch/University of Washington)
Shooting PDMS stars
These stars, as small as 20 micrometres wide, are made of a material called polydimethylsiloxane or PDMS, commonly used to make microfluidic devices or surfaces for cells to grow on. The material is poured over a template mould to create numerous copies.
Journal reference:
(Image: Albert Folch)
