Snail tongues

[blepharopsis]

Radula – a rasping tongue – of an Astraea conehead snail, Astraea tecta, an apple snail, Ampullaria sp. and a zebra nerite snail, Neritina natalensis. Depth color-coded projections.

Staining: Congo Red.
Imaging: 10x/0.45NA objective; ZEISS LSM 880.

[rjlittlefield]

These are lovely!

I think I understand that these images started off as fluorescent confocal, and the Congo Red stain is to provide the fluorescence.

But then I am intrigued that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_red does not mention anything about fluorescence.

Has Wikipedia missed something?!

--Rik

[blepharopsis]

Thanks, Rik!

Yes, apparently Wikipedia forgot to mention the fluorescence of Congo Red - which, by the way, is super bright and quite resistant to photo-bleaching. Pleasure to work with.

These are lovely!

I think I understand that these images started off as fluorescent confocal, and the Congo Red stain is to provide the fluorescence.

But then I am intrigued that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_red does not mention anything about fluorescence.

Has Wikipedia missed something?!

--Rik

[Olympusman]

Those are crazy wonderful!

Mike

[rjlittlefield]

Good news, the Wikipedia article now mentions "confocal" and "fluorescent".

I forget, is there any way to get these in stereo? If so, I would love to see at least one as stereo monochrome.

--Rik

[Macro_Cosmos]

These are beautiful, one day I will also own a confocal microscope and have the ability to prepare such slides.

[blepharopsis]

Hi Rik, I have some red-cyan anaglyphs, would those work?

Good news, the Wikipedia article now mentions "confocal" and "fluorescent".

I forget, is there any way to get these in stereo? If so, I would love to see at least one as stereo monochrome.

--Rik

[René]

Wow, amazing! How did you clean them?

René

[ModelZ]

Superb! Almost graphic art rather than photos.

-Karl

[rjlittlefield]

Thanks for the stereo! That first one is spectacularly clean!

--Rik

[blepharopsis]

Thanks, René!
I froze the snails at -20C, scooped them out of their shells and liquified with trypsin overnight at 37C. After that treatment, radula is the only solid left

Wow, amazing! How did you clean them?

René

[rjlittlefield]

liquified with trypsin overnight at 37C

What concentration?

--Rik

[blepharopsis]

I don't really know, I eyeball the amount Likely around 5-10 mg/ml, in PBS.

liquified with trypsin overnight at 37C

What concentration?

--Rik

[hart3d]

Beautiful! Science as art.

When you say "depth color-coded", does that mean you could convert color into a depth-map and then do a horizontal displacement shift
in photoshop (or other) in order to get a full color side-by-side stereo view? Love to see that.

John
hart3d.com

[blepharopsis]

Thanks! Sometimes science is more art than science

I can easily convert a stack into depth color-coded stack (although only one color palette, or lookup table, is available in this mode), and make a stereo pair in ImageJ/Fiji (see below). To get a full 3d experience I extracted a mesh out of the confocal volume of one of the samples and rendered a fly-by video, but to see it you'd have to find me on Instagram Below are 2 frames from it.

Beautiful! Science as art.

When you say "depth color-coded", does that mean you could convert color into a depth-map and then do a horizontal displacement shift
in photoshop (or other) in order to get a full color side-by-side stereo view? Love to see that.

John
hart3d.com