#synura

"Some choanoflagellates are non-motile, meaning they spend most of their life not moving around. Instead, they just stick themselves to a nice, sturdy surface and grab whatever food passes by. There are also motile choanoflagellates, which move around with their flagella, but in kind of a weird way. You see, other flagellates use the twisting rotor movement of their flagella to pull them around the microcosmos, but choanoflagellates use their flagellum to push themselves through the water."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Getting to Know Our Single-Celled Ancestors

"To get from one of these images to the other, James--our master of microscopes--didn't change any of the technical settings on his microscope or pull some kind of video editing wizardry. He just simply added a drop of oil to the coverslip encasing the glaucoma, and dipped the objective into the oil. Now this is because the cone of light going from the specimen into the objective isn't just going straight from the sample to the lens. It's passing through something--it's pass through air."

Journey to the Microcosmos- We Dipped Our Lens in Oil to See More Detail

"What the number describes is the ability of the objective to take in light. As light travels from the sample and to the objective, it radiates outwards like a cone. The higher your numberical aperture, the wider the cone of light that's going into your objective. That allows for more rays to enter the objective from all sorts of different angles, helping to illuminate more details and give greater resolution to your final image. Of course, that's still not all that goes into capturing the perfect microscopic image."

Journey to the Microcosmos- We Dipped Our Lens in Oil to See More Detail

"Well, they look kind of like this. No, not the big gold things, those are synura and not the big clear thing in the middle either, that's an empty frustule of a diatom. No, we're talking about the small, balloon-looking thing hanging out on top of the diatom. So, what is that? It is a choanoflagellate, but you can call it a sibling. A very, very, very distant sibling of sorts, but a very important one."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Getting to Know Our Single-Celled Ancestors

"All of these things make choanoflagellates interesting to watch, but if you're looking at them and wondering how they could possibly be the closest relatives to animals, we don't blame you. What made biologists look at them and see any kind of kinship to animals? Why not some other protist? To see the resemblance, you have to go to something a bit more fundamental when it comes to animals: the sponge."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Getting to Know Our Single-Celled Ancestors

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Just some of my Favorite Organisms from this past Year. Happy International Microorganisms Day Everyone!

Journey to the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam’s Germs

Brightfield Microscopy (left) & Differential Interference Contrast Microscopy (Right)

Journey to the Microcosmos- We Upgraded Our Microscope!

Images Originally Captured by Jam’s Germs