We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Light Microscopy Australia Image Competition.

We had 116 eligible entries across the four categories and with so many beautiful images this year, it was very competitive.

Each category will award a $400 first prize and a $200 second prize. We would like to thank the sponsors of each category, Optiscan, Zeiss Australia and Nikon for their support of the competition.

Please follow the links below to see this years winners.

Life Science Category Winners
In Vivo Category Winners
Materials Science Category Winners

LIVE CELL CATEGORY

Proudly sponsored by Nikon

 

 

 

1ST PRIZE: Aria Ahmed-Cox – Children’s Cancer Institute

The Paths we Trace: Lifetimes of Fluorescent Membranes in Cancer – Submission depicts vesicle trafficking in brain cancer (glioblastoma, U87) cells labelled with the fluorescent membrane dye, DiI (Life Technologies), during a three-minute acquisition. Images acquired using a rapid fluorescent lifetime imaging system with a Picoquant Microtime 200 and 100X UPL SAPO objective (NA = 1.40) with immersion oil (Type LDF, Cargille Labs). Timing electronics were provided by Time Harp 260 nano (TH260nano) and photons detected by PMA Hybrid detection. Raw FLIM data was Fourier transformed into phasor space (SimFCS) with clusters of pixels with similar lifetimes segmented and colour coded.

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2ND PRIZE: Esmeralda Paric – Dementia Research Centre, Macquarie University

A Missed Connection – Within a culture of 100,000 mouse neuronal cells, a low rate transduction resulted in a few cells (such as these two) specially producing a protein of interest linked to GFP. Imaging only in the 488 line, makes them look as though they are not already integrated in dense networks (which they are), but rather, searching in emptiness, only just missing each other. Cells were recorded over hours using the Zeiss AxioObserver 7 at 20x objective magnitude.

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DISTINCTION – Robert Ju – IMB, University of Queensland

Squish and Squeeze – Membrane labelled cells squeezing through constrictions. Nikon ti-e Spinning disc confocal yokogawa X1 head.

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DISTINCTION: Ivar Noordstra – IMB, University of Queensland

There is Always More to Discover Underneath – This is a mixed culture of epithelial cells stably expressing LifeAct-GFP and LifeAct-TagRFPT. These markers are used to visualize the dynamic behaviour of the actin cytoskeleton. The movie was captured using a spinning disc confocal and displays the actin dynamics in both the apical and basal side of the same cells. At the apical side, actin localizes to cell-cell junctions where contractile networks are being build. At the same time, actin drives the formation of lamellipodia at the basal side, highlighting the fascinating dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton.