Wellcome Image Awards in London–Science as Art

Combining art and science seems to be an area of interest for both artists and scientists internationally. Last month, judges of the Wellcome Image Awards compiled 20 different artworks to display in several science centers in London, as well as a few other centers in the United States and other countries.

One image of interest to me was that of the internal chemical reactions occurring inside the kidney of a mouse. At first glance, the image looks like a painting, but after reading the description, I found that this image is the product of a technique called Computational Molecular Phenotyping.

Computational Molecular Phenotyping explained:  CMP essentially gives each cell a unique color profile based on the metabolic needs of the cell at that point in time. For the purpose of this image, the mouse kidney tissue was stained with silver-labelled antibodies to detect the three small molecules or metabolites of interest (the amino acids: aspartate, glutamine and glutathione). The signals from the antibodies were first captured as greyscale images using light microscopy (think of the table microscopes used in biology labs)  and then digitally converted into red, blue and green, respectively. The three separate color images were then overlaid to produce the final composite image. Visible blocks of color in the image may represent a single cell or a group of neighboring cells with a similar metabolic state. Scientists use this technology in order to visualize the process of metabolism in cells. It’s fascinating that technology itself is producing works of art, and by doing so, the artwork/imagery reveals important information to the scientist such as at what pace the kidney organ is breaking down proteins within the body, and the diversity of the cell’s stages in the metabolic process at a certain point in time.

http://www.wellcomeimageawards.org/2015/chemical-reactions-in-the-kidney# 

Chemical reactions in the kidney

JEFFERSON BROWN, ROBERT E MARC, BRYAN W JONES, GLEN PRUSKY AND NAZIA ALAM

Colour-coded map of part of a mouse kidney as it breaks down food to make energy. This is done through a large set of chemical reactions (collectively referred to as ‘metabolism’) and is required for cells to survive. Here, three small molecules – the amino acids aspartate and glutamine and the antioxidant glutathione – produced by some of these reactions are visible (coloured red, blue and green, respectively). The brighter the colour, the more of that molecule there is in the cell. This image was created using a technique called computational molecular phenotyping and shows how metabolism can vary between cells in the same organ at a given point in time.