Winner announcement of Image Competition 2011

	1st PLACE: Vasanth Thamodaran Bruce Lab Description: Projected confocal microscopy z-sections of a 16-cell ‘compacted morula’ stage mouse embryo. Actin cytoskeleton is stained with rhodamine conjugated phalloidin (red) and DNA in the cell nuclei are counter-stained with DAPI (blue).
	2nd PLACE: Alexey Bondar Lazar Lab Description: Ornament_1 Abstract ornament obtained from two-photon polarization microscopy images of a differentiating PC-12 cell expressing membrane-bound yellow fluorescent protein. The ornament was obtained by producing a 3D-projection of the PC-12 cell, rotating it around the Y-axis and summing up the resulting images representing different angles of cell rotation.
	shared 3rd PLACE: Jitka Krucinska Obornik Lab Description: "It is not easy to shine" Transfected cells of Phaeodactylum tricornutum can dramatically change their shape when they are forced to express eYFP-tagged protein (green; magenta ~ plastid autofluorescence) from Chromera velia. They are egg-shaped and their size is almost twice smaller than in the case of wild-type cells (white framed picture).
	shared 3rd PLACE: Alexey Bondar Lazar Lab Description: HEK293_field_of_view_rainbow Two-photon polarization microscopy image of a field of view of HEK293 cells expressing membrane-tagged yellow fluorescent protein. Rainbow coloring of the cell outline shows linear dichroism of the yellow fluorescent protein.
	HONORABLE MENTION: Pavel Poliak Lukes Lab Description: Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself. - Francis Crick

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