#medaka

I am usually one for bolder patterns, but how cute are those itty bitty tiny medaka (Japanese rice fish)! They are depicted as seen from above a pond/rice paddy - the thin silvery stripes must glitter so nicely irl.

Seeing is Believing

Investigating how the eye develops is a challenge in our delicate embryos. Often scientists turn to simpler, yet similar organisms like the medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) looking for pieces of the overall puzzle. The consensus is the animal eye usually forms from two parts: the lens develops on the 'outside' of a layer of embryonic tissue, while the retina forms from a loop of progenitor cells growing behind the lens. Yet these medaka lenses (pink) develop on the 'inside' of the retinas (green) – so what is going on? These early eyes are grown from an organoid, a ball of stem cells nurtured in the lab to mimic the real thing. In this case, however, they’ve developed differently, possibly revealing multiple evolutionary paths to achieve a developed eye, but also highlighting the importance of different perspectives and techniques when building a picture of delicate early life.

Image made using Leica Microsystems microscopy

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Elin Stahl and Miguel Angel Delgado-Toscano, and colleagues

Centre for Organismal Studies Heidelberg (COS), Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife (reviewed preprint), April 2026

FIFTEEN FUCKING EUROS PER FISH. IMPORTED FROM THE BITCH ASS GERMANY. ONLY 20 FISHES. AND I GET THIS ULTRA SCOLIOSIS JR. i hate this hobby