Feature Story | 24-Jun-2025
Advanced microscopes are allowing a closer look at life
image: Dr Ben Steventon’s team studies developmental biology - how animals develop from a single cell into a complete organism. They want to understand how cells decide what they’re going to become - like skin, muscle, or brain - and how these choices happen at the right time and place in development. The central 3D image is the growing tip of a zebrafish embryo’s tail, showing individual cells. The coloured images around this show groups of cells in which different genes are activated, which determines the ability of the cells to generate different types of tissue. The image was created using a laser scanning confocal microscope.
Credit: Dillan Saunders