Microscopic view of multicolored slice of gold ore.

Beautiful Science

The path to discovery can be painstaking, complex, and…aesthetically beautiful. In the following pages, UNLV scientists provide some of the most striking images they’ve examined as part of their research. Learn how these fascinating photos were captured and what they represent.

Taken by geoscience professor Jean Cline, this is an image of a thin slice of gold ore that has been magnified 400x with a petrographic microscope. The sample came from the northern Nevada Carlin-type gold deposits, which have been studied extensively by Cline and her team; they are seeking to understand the sequence of the formation of minerals in the ore. The white, blue, yellow, and pink are jasperoid quartz, and the red is realgar.

Microscopic view of a purple fruitfly ovary against a black background.
UNLV life sciences professor Laurel Raftery and her former post-doctoral researcher Xiaodong Wu captured this image, magnified 40x with a confocal microscope. It is a portion of a fruit fly ovary that shows developing follicles that will each make a fruitfly egg. The blue dye detects DNA; the big round blue blobs are nuclei of cells that are making RNA and protein to transfer to the egg, which is mostly unstained. The green and blue regions are the cells that will make the eggshell. There are gaps in the green (blue and red cells) that are mutant cells, which are missing a protein called BunA, which regulates gene expression; the cells that are missing BunA are disorganized and have invaded into the area that contains the developing egg. Raftery’s team’s data suggests that BunA is involved in keeping cells from becoming invasive cancer cells.

 

Microscopic view of green and yellow wing cells that are developing inside a fruitfly larva.
Wing cells that are developing inside a fruitfly larva are stained green to detect the locations of a protein that regulates gene expression relative to the nuclei of the cells, which are outlined in orange. The goal of the research is to understand how cells communicate with each other to coordinate growth and tissue organization. The image was taken with a confocal microscope at a magnification of 40x by UNLV life science professor Laurel Raftery and her former post-doctoral fellow Jing Cao.

 

Microscopic view of yellow slice of gold ore.
This photograph is of a different sample of gold ore taken from a Nevada Carlin-type gold deposit, and it was also magnified 400x with a petrographic microscope. The gold color in the photo is a mix of the minerals realgar and orpiment, which contain both arsenic and sulfur. The donut-shaped white crystals are the mineral pyrite; the smallest of them contain gold. Through examination of these types of samples, Cline and her team have been able to devise a model to help exploration geologists search for similar deposits around the world.
Microscoptic view of green-ish gold particles in a composite material
This image, taken by chemistry professor David Hatchett, shows the size and dispersion of gold particles in a composite material that he created from polymer (plastic) and gold. This material is designed to improve chemical sensors; the plastic provides a larger surface area to increase the sensitivity of the sensor and the gold enhances the sensor’s ability to detect specific substances. Hatchett’s research focuses on interfacing the two different materials to obtain a single, synergistic material. The original image, obtained with an optical microscope, was magnified 100 times.

 

Microscopic view of green and blue salivary gland cells from a fruitfly larva.
This image shows a grouping of three prominent salivary gland cells from a fruitfly larva that have different subcellular compartments labeled with fluorescent proteins. Green indicates the membranes surrounding secretory granules containing a glycoprotein cargo protein (blue). These types of images help UNLV researchers better understand how steroid hormones generally trigger tissue-specific responses in animal cells. Fruitfly cells are used because, at the molecular level, they respond to steroids much in the way human cells respond to estrogens and androgens. Ph.D. student Elana Paladino took the photograph with a laser-scanning confocal microscope at 630x magnification.

 

Microscopic view of blue and orange carbon nanostructures.
This image depicts carbon nanostructures that were extracted from soot condensed on a kitchen ceiling. The soot, which is a product of burning biomass materials, was examined as part of ongoing research on carbon nanomaterials in various natural and artificial environments. The original image shows an area on the surface of the sample that is 2,000 nanometers wide. (A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.) Captured with atomic force microscopy, the image was taken by Ich Tran, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of UNLV chemistry professor Clemens Heske.

 

Microscopic view of a fluorite crystal.
This photograph of a two-millimeter fluorite crystal was taken with an optical microscope from a thin section of igneous rock. Through examination of this sample and others like it, Minghua Ren, an assistant research professor in geoscience, seeks to understand the relationship between the colors observed and the conditions under which crystals were formed. Fluorite manifests many colors, such as the purple, blue, green, and white. The bands of black to light purple in this sample indicate a variation in trace amounts of manganese, iron, and magnesium. Ren, who captured this image, seeks to better understand how silicic igneous rocks evolved, what conditions contributed to their formation, and what tectonic locations produced these conditions.

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