Mouse retina by NIH Image Gallery Via Flickr: What looks like the gossamer wings of a butterfly is actually the retina of a mouse, delicately snipped to lay flat and sparkling with fluorescent molecules. The image is from a research project investigating the promise of gene therapy for glaucoma. It was created at an NIGMS-funded advanced microscopy facility that develops technology for imaging across many scales, from whole organisms to cells to individual molecules. The ability to obtain high-resolution imaging of tissue as large as whole mouse retinas was made possible by a technique called large-scale mosaic confocal microscopy, which was pioneered by the NIGMS-funded National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research. The technique is similar to Google Earth in that it computationally stitches together many small, high-resolution images. More details: images.nigms.nih.gov/Pages/DetailPage.aspx?imageID=3697 Credit: Kenyoung Kim, Wonkyu Ju and Mark Ellisman, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego NIH funding from: National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
