Dazzling close-up images of the natural world, from flowers to flies

These are some of the winning and shortlisted entries for the Olympus Image of the Year Global Life Science Light Microscopy Award, a global photography competition showcasing the art of scientific imaging

By Gege Li

THESE dazzling images, each captured with an optical microscope, hold a lens up to the natural world, revealing the beauty and richness of an up-close perspective. They make up some of the winning and shortlisted entries for the Olympus Image of the Year Global Life Science Light Microscopy Award, an international photography competition showcasing the art of scientific imaging.

The above images show (top to bottom): an arbuscular mycorrhizal soil fungus cell containing hundreds of nuclei, unlike typical cells that carry just one nucleus, which won Vasilis Kokkoris the regional prize for Europe, the Middle East and Africa; the axons in the developing nervous system of a zebrafish embryo, which earned Layra Cintron-Rivera an honourable mention; and a Siberian milkwort plant captured by Mingyue Jia, another of the competition’s honourable mentions.

The above images show (top to bottom): the ovaries of a fruit fly, an honourable mention taken by Yujun Chen; Ivan Radin’s winning image for the Americas region of Physcomitrium patens (commonly known as spreading earth moss), a model organism for studying plants; and the competition’s global winner, captured by Jan Martinek, of the flower of Arabidopsis thaliana (or thale cress), another plant model organism that Martinek made chemically transparent to reveal the stained pollen tube within, shown in yellow.