Killian Jones Appreciation Meme:

Millennium Falcon

The Millennium Falcon as it first encounters the Death Star. 

Nudibranchs, the most adorable mollusks.  

Basket Case

At first glance, there appears to be little difference between these two images. They both contain mouse nerve cells from a special part of the brain called the amygdala, which is thought to be important for forming emotional memories. And they both show a sprawling principal neuron (a type of nerve cell, highlighted yellow), connecting with a blue-coloured basket cell – another type of nerve cell. But that’s where the similarity ends. Detailed analysis has revealed that there are actually two distinct types of basket cells in the brain. One of them (left) makes a molecule called parvalbumin, while the other makes cholecystokinin. Each type forms a separate circuit of nerve cells in the brain which behave very differently, suggesting they have distinct functions in the amygdala. Teasing apart these complex networks is a tough job, but it helps us to understand how our brains work and how memories are made.

Written by Kat Arney

Image from work by Tibor Andrási, Judit M. Veres and Laura Rovira-Esteban and colleagues

Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, May 2017

And now for some culture…

For this drawing, Cinae Collins didn’t use paints or pencils; she used three species of bacteria to recreate Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Collins, a senior at Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Illinois, drew the image on a plate of blue-dyed agar gel using swabs of cultures of Bacillus cereus, Serratia marcescens, and Micrococcus luteus. After about a day, in the places where she’d swabbed the bacteria, yellow and white spots and swirls—which are actually bacterial colonies—emerged, revealing her image.

Submitted by Kim Smith and Cinae Collins

More C&EN stories:

Vincent van Gogh inspires artwork rendered with science

don’t ever think of Snoopy as a normal beagle, you’ll regret it 😂

Original painting this is based on (http://mei-xing.tumblr.com/image/110853837508) by http://mei-xing.tumblr.com/

A User’s Guide To The Brain