Image of the Month

All users of the Advanced Microscopy and Imaging Center are encouraged to participate in the Image of the Month contest. To participate, simply email an image that you took with one of the Center instruments to microscopy@utk.edu with a short description of what the sample is and how you have imaged it. Only two-dimensional images will be accepted (no 3D image stacks or time-lapse sequences). At the beginning of every month, a panel of experienced microscopists will select the best image and post it on this page.

December 2018

Localization of a putative receptor protein in the plant growth-promoting bacterium Azospirillum brasilense. The bacteria have a diameter of about 0.7 µm and their length increases from about 2 to 4 µm before they start dividing. The putative receptor was tagged with yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) and localizes to a small region at one end of the cell that appears to be to the flagellar pole, as it is seen localizing to the non-dividing end of dividing cells. Cells may have two foci of receptor accumulation prior to cell division.

The striking quality of this image was made possible with the new Lightning deconvolution software on the Leica SP8X confocal microscope. The Lightning software improves the resolution of images by almost two-fold and will be available for general use later this month.

This image was taken by Scott Carlew and Dr. John Dunlap on the Leica SP8X confocal microscope and is a maximum intensity projection of 25 image slices. Scott is a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Brad Binder in the Department of Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology.