Latest winner in our Research is Beautiful campaign

Our Research is Beautiful campaign continues to inspire with some fantastic images, but there has to be a winner, and here’s February’s…

This entry is part 12 of 13 in the series Research is Beautiful

Our Research is beautiful image campaign highlights images that showcase your research – from your science, to the people in your lab and everything that surrounds it.

Congratulations to Danny Gold, a DPhil student in Professor Francis Barr’s Molecular Mechanisms of Cell Division lab at The University of Oxford, for his winning image. It captures microtubules attaching to chromosomes via kinetochores to form mitotic spindles.

Danny says: “Cutting-edge STED (Stimulated Emission Depletion) microscopy is enabling me to understand how cells share out their chromosomes in much greater detail. Each chromosome in the cell has a tiny structure – a kinetochore – which binds to microtubules, which are themselves a thousand times thinner than a human hair.”

“When the cell divides, microtubules attach to the chromosomes by their kinetochores and form a beautiful structure called the mitotic spindle. The microtubules then pull individual chromosomes into the daughter cells, ensuring every new cell has a copy of each and every chromosome.

This process often goes awry in cancers, causing something called chromosome instability and ever more damaged cells.”

Send us your images!

To enter, e-mail your photos to [email protected] with a short caption and your contact details. Images should be sent as JPEG files and, ideally, be at least 2000px. Feel free to email this address if you have any questions.

Each month, a panel of CRUK staff will review the submissions and choose the best image(s) that month. Successful entrants will be notified directly and the image(s) will be showcased on Cancer News for Researchers and our social-media platforms X and LinkedIn.

The campaign is open to UK residents aged 18 or over. Please ensure before submitting an entry that you have read the campaign terms and conditions.

T&Cs here