LMP Art Competition winners 2021

Daniel Schlam, Resident, Anatomical Pathology postgraduate program

About Daniel's image

A scanning electron micrograph of a human macrophage fighting a fungal infection. Having sensed danger (in the form of soluble anaphylatoxins), this macrophage extends dramatic actin-driven extensions and membrane ruffles, which allow for tracking, trapping, and eventually internalizing, the invading pathogens.

Lilian Lin, PhD Candidate in Dr. Janice Robertson's lab

About Lilian's image

An immunofluorescence image of a mouse's brain that has been injected with the adeno associated virus (AAV) that expresses EGFP tagged TDP-35, a pathological splice variant of TDP-43. TDP-43 pathology is seen in ALS.

Robert D'Cruz, MD/PhD Candidate in Dr. Norman Rosenblum's lab

About Robert's image

A midsagittal section of an E15.5 murine embryonic kidney imaged using a scanning confocal microscope. The embryonic kidney has been immunolabelled with DAPI to label nuclei (blue), SALL1 to label nephron and stromal progenitor cells (red), and VIMENTIN to label interstitial cells (green).

Aaryn Montgomery-Song, MSc student in Dr. Rita Kandel's lab

There were so many beautiful images that it was hard just to pick a top three. Aaryn's image came in so close that we felt we should give it an 'honourable recognition' and include it as one of the images to be framed in MSB.

About Aaryn's image

A tissue-engineered intervertebral disc stained for type I and II collagens visualized by epifluorescence microscopy. The inner rings of the disc are unique for their expression of type II collagen, whereas the outer rings only express type I collagen. In this image, miniature lab-grown discs follow a similar distribution of collagens. Type I collagen pseudo is coloured magenta/yellow and type II pseudo coloured cyan/white.

The xylem and phloem of a plant's vascular tissue under a light microscope.

'Squamous Monster': Squamous cell carcinoma, with an optical microscope.

'Brain infarcts secondary to emboli': Whole brain embedding in celloidin, sledge microtome section. Staining: Luxol-Fast-Blue, Haematoxylin-Eosin.

'Beauty of the beast': Female of Anyclostoma duodenale. Light microscopy, wet mount picture from gastric aspirate in a patient with severe gastritis and GI bleeding.

'MMA (mononuclear monolayer assay)': Opsonized RBCs phagocytes by monocyte from PBMCs of healthy donor, under Phase contrasts microscope.

'Salts of Science': Using Scanning Electron Microscopy, salts synthesized for being used in wound dressings. The synthesis process produces quite uniform cuboidal crystals.

'Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy - Not Just a Plaque Story': A 40x immunofluorescent image taken of a coronal TgF344-AD (transgenic Alzheimer's disease) rat brain section. This tissue was stained for 4G8 (anti Amyloid-beta antibody), α-SMA (arterioles), and lectin (blood vessels). In the foreground, we can see a build up of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) on the arteriole. And in the background, we can see the rest of the diverse cerebrovascular system.

'Pathologic Treasures': Image of Gamna-Gandy bodies from the spleen of a patient with sickle cell disease who died following sickle cell crisis leading to bone marrow infarction that embolized, passed through patent atrial septal defect, and obstructed a coronary artery. Light microscopy image, stained with hematoxylin and eosin, 20x magnification.

These are fibroblasts we derived from patients with non-small cell lung cancer. The cells were cultured in hydrogel to assess contractility, and were stained with different plasma membrane dyes. We used widefield fluorescence microscopy (with tiling function) to obtain this image.

'Mourning the dead': A Pap-stained ThinPrep slide from a renal cyst that shows Echinococcus. In this image an Echinococcus scolex is seen next to the fragmented remains of an adult Echinoccus cestode, with the calcareous corpuscles clearly visable in the fragmented adult.

'Sea Turtle's Migration': Papanicolaou-stained ThinPrep cytology of urine from ileal conduit showing vegetable cells originating from the ostomy adhesive. They reminded me of the pattern on a turtle's shell and how sea turtles make use of currents during their long-distance migrations.

'Hitchhiker': A living tick on the slide. Zeiss Axio Lab A1 (optical microscope, Moto Z2 Play cell phone camera over ocular lens). A homeless dog entered our Forensic Institute (in Southern Brazil) by the backdoor. Skinny, covered with ticks, he was fed by our team, taken to a vet and forwarded to a lovely home. Some ticks remained as visitors for a couple of days...

'Ovarian mucinous cystadenoma - Lab Rat': HE image. Ovarian endometriosis. This is not a sad rat that is trapped in the lab. No. This lab rat has made the lab its home. It knows every nook and cranny of every space.  It delights in traveling its secret corridors after hours. It loves carrying out experiments, looking at slides and discussing cases with its lab rat friends. Sure, it might have grown a few warts on its back over the years, and become a bit sensitive to sunlight, but these are badges of honor, of life happily lived, of time well spent!

'A Spider on its Web': While this image may look like a spider on its web, it is actually an NIH 3T3 fibroblast on a collagen scaffold! This fibroblast was modified to overexpress a protein called DDR1, which is upregulated in fibrosis and certain cancers. We have previously shown that DDR1-overexpressing cells pull on collagen fibers as they spread, to increase the number of aligned (parallel) fibers, and collagen stiffness, which are important hallmarks of fibrotic disease which can be seen in this image. Images were obtained through confocal reflectance microscopy, where the red staining represents F-actin and white represents individual collagen fibers.