Paul L. Appleton managed to take a 'close-up' photo of the colon of a mouse, and for this achievement he won a prize on September 21st in New York.
Appleton went even "deeper" than just the colon: his picture is of the cell nuclei of the colon cells, magnified 740 times and seen with a two-photon fluorescence microscopy.
The contest was open to people from a range of scientific fields, and quite successful considering 1700 digital images were submitted for consideration. The blue colon cell nuclei of one of our favorite model organisms made it quite far, beating all other pictures for the $3000 prize.
Imaging techniques are constantly evolving, with new techniques being developed or derived from older technology. As the field grows, it will help researchers get more insight into the workings of our cells, and that of almost any other organism.
