Video Gallery: The Most Amazing Movies of the Minuscule World

Drosophila Blood Circulation
By Dr. Robert Markus, Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Szeged, Hungary
This video captures circulating blood cells in a fruit fly larva (Drosophila melanogaster.
Technique: Fluorescence
Magnification: 50x

Arabidopsis Root Growth
By Daniel von Wangenheim, Goethe Universität Frankfurt
Video of the well-studied plant model Arabidopsis thaliana shows a lateral root growing out of the primary root.
Technique: light sheet-based fluorescence microscopy
Magnification: 20x/0.5 W N-ACHROPLAN

The Rotifer and the Worm
Craig Smith, a photographer in Fresno, Calif., captured two videos that received honorable mentions. The first shows a microscopic aquatic rotifer, with its corona extending and retracting during feeding. The second shows asexual budding in a worm, Aeolosoma Hemprichi, with the new worm attached to the posterior end of the parent.
Technique (both videos): Darkfield
Magnification: 400x

Monkey Cells in Real Time
We told you about this video, a major breakthrough in cellular imaging, when it was first published last spring. Researchers led by Liang Gao at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute used a new technique to capture this image of an African green monkey kidney cell. The video shows the cell membrane ruffling and internal vacuoles inside the living cell.
Technique: Two photon Bessel beam plane illumination microscopy
Magnification: 56x

Desmid dividing
By Dr. Jeremy Pickett-Heaps of the University of Melbourne.
Technique: Time lapse video microscopy
Magnification: Non-dividing cells measure about 170 microns across, Pickett-Heaps notes.

How Do Ellipsoid Eggs Form?
Saori Haigo of the University of California - San Francisco wanted to investigate how ellipsoid eggs, like the types laid by birds and some insects, form during development. Haigo dissected developing eggs out of the ovaries of fruit flies and watched how they behaved outside the body. It turns out that developing eggs spin around the long axis. The green fluorescence highlights the surface of the cells, and the red marks the cell nuclei.
Technique: Live cell imaging; a 3-hour time lapse at five minute intervals
Magnification: 400X

Budded Yeast Under Attack
This video captures amoebas ingesting brewer’s yeast. They are expressing a red fluorescent protein to label actin filaments, and a green protein to label what’s called the phagocytic cup — the method by which the amoeba ingests the yeast cell. We will let author Margaret Clarke of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation explain further: A phagocytic cup often pauses at or returns to the concave curvature at the neck of a budded yeast, and actin [a protein] accumulates there in an attempt to seal the cup. An unsuccessful attempt may end in retraction of the cup and release of the particle, or the cell may eventually resume extension of the cup and engulf the entire particle. Those two outcomes are shown here.
Technique: Laser scanning confocal microscopy. A time series was collected in a single focal plane, with images acquired at 4-second intervals.
Magnification: 33 microns x 26 microns