Images from gradschool

While my wife is at Spanish class I was rummaging through some old data CDs from gradschool. I had lots of great pics in there.

Picture #1 is of the microtubule cytoskeleton of a migrating cell. I took this picture when I was investigating how migrating cells modify their microtubules (yellow/green microtubules here) when they crawl (in this picture towards the woundedge on the right). In red are the unmodified microtubules. If you get the impression that there is a circular structure to the left that is devoid of microtubules, you're right, that's the cell's nucleus. For more on microtubule modification, click here. For more on how the nucleus gets nudged to the back of the cell during migration (a topic I worked on as well), click here.

Picture #2 is of a fibroblast in the act of re-adhering to a fibronectin coated coverslip. I took this picture while studying how cellular adhesion stimulates the modification of tubulin. Blue is the phase image, red is the cell's unmodified (or tyr) microtubules, yellow/green is the cell's modified (glu) MTs.

Picture #3 random salt crystals: