On day 185 of #LMB365, the early morning sunshine casts a reflection of a 1950s ball and spoke model of the alpha-helix peptide chain onto the wall of the library mezzanine. Linus Pauling, of Caltech, beat the MRC Unit in solving this structure and this gave the Cambridge team the urgency to be first in determining the structure of DNA
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LMB 365 – Day 184
This photo for day 184 of #LMB365 was taken by Ben Phillips when leaving work at sunset on the summer solstice, when most people had already gone home for the night. Amazing colours and reflections…
LMB 365 – Day 183
This image for day 183 of #LMB365 is the surface of a Drosophila melanogaster embryo showing fluorescent markers of nuclei (magenta) and cell membranes (green) from Yara Sanchez-Corrales in Katja Röper’s group in the Cell Biology Division.
LMB 365 – Day 182
Day 182 of #LMB365 was taken outside the LMB’s Max Perutz Lecture Theatre where Anna Howes and Vaithish Velazhahan, both first year PhD students, were awarded LMBees for attending the most Biophysical Techniques Lectures as part of their PhD training. The lecture theatre will be the venue for a one-day meeting in November, organized by the Biophysics Facility, AstraZeneca and Imperial College London, on how cutting-edge biophysics is being applied to complex biological systems. More details can be found at https://www3.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/sites/nextgen/
LMB 365 – Day 181
This model for day 181 of #LMB365 shows a molecule of RNA folded into a ribozyme – a specific 3D shape that can carry out reactions. This particular ribozyme builds other RNA molecules, and can even make a copy of itself. It was developed by scientists in Phil Holliger’s group in the PNAC division as part of an effort to reconstitute a self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution, a top goal of synthetic biology. At this year’s Royal Society Summer Exhibition, LMB scientists will be presenting how such self-replicating molecules could have contributed to the origin of life https://www3.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/sites/recipe4life/
LMB 365 – Day 180
This image for day 180 of #LMB365 was taken by Ilaria Chiaradia in the Cell Biology Division when she was on a confocal microscopy training session. It shows atypical mitosis in a HeLa cell which is characterised by double the number of centrosomes (labelled with anti-γ-tubulin antibody in green) and cross-shaped mitotic DNA (labelled in blue with DAPI), while mitochondria are labelled in red.