The image for day 109 of #LMB365 is provided by Ben Sutcliffe in the LMB’s Light Microscopy Facility. When they need to align the laser on the custom mSPIM light sheet microscope they use a solution of highlighter pen in water so that they can see the beam.
LMB 365 – Day 109
LMB 365 – Day 108
On day 108 of #LMB365 a new turbomolecular pump is installed on a new thin film instrument in the lab. Much like a jet engine, the “turbo” pump contains a turbine that spins at very high speed (60,000 rpm) to suck the air out of the instrument. They run 24/7 for years on end to keep our electron microscopes and instruments running.
LMB 365 – Day 107
Georges Kohler was born on this day in 1946, in Munich, Germany. On day 107 of #LMB365 he is pictured with César Milstein. Georges and César were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1984, for their work on the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies
LMB 365 – Day 106
On this day in 1999, Venki Ramakrishnan started his group at the LMB. On day 106 of #LMB365, Venki is pictured giving a lecture to his colleagues at LMB, in front of a schematic of the structure of ribosome. Venki helped to determine the structure and for this shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In his Nobel biography, From Chidambaram to Cambridge: A Life in Science, Venki commented, “So only a few months after my move to Cambridge, with the rest of my lab still in Utah, we had made a major breakthrough. When I revealed our findings at the triennial ribosome meeting in Denmark in June, I could sense the shock in the audience, especially since virtually none of them knew we were working on the problem. Soon afterwards, our work was published in Nature in August 1999 with much fanfare.”
LMB 365 – Day 104
Day 104 of #LMB365 shows Greg Winter at the entrance to the LMB. Greg was born on this day in 1951. He studied for his PhD at the LMB and after postdoctoral research, returned here as a Programme Leader in 1981. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018 for his work on phage display of peptides and antibodies
LMB 365 – Day 103
This image for day 103 of #LMB365 shows the denticles on the ventral side of a Drosophila embryo cuticle taken by differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy. The denticles form segmentally repeated belts in the embryo and can have different sizes, shape and orientation. The pattern results from the spatially organised activation of several signalling pathways during embryogenesis and this can serve as a physiological readout for changes in signalling pathways including planar polarity. Mariann Bienz’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division is using this to study Wnt signalling components which are involved in the development of cancer.