I’ve been running a stem cell image contest here on the blog with the prize being $100. In the past I’ve done similar contests, but the response to this one was really impressive with 24 entries.
I also ran a stem cell video contest last year. The winning video, which is stem cell claymation and that you can find at that link, is downright hilarious. Update: see the winner of the 2019 stem cell image contest here.
My thanks to everyone who entered and shared their cool images of stem cells this year. As one entrant put it, stem cells are so pretty! I definitely agree. I made a montage (pasted at the bottom of the post) of all the entries.
So how to pick just one winner? It wasn’t easy.
The winner is graduate student Tina Zimmerman, who submitted the above image of a differentiated embryoid body made from mouse embryonic stem cells. Tina is a student at University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany. She stained the cells for nestin (blue) and doublecortin (DCX; red), and the cells have a CAG-GFP reporter. We can see neural stem cells, neural precursors, and maybe some residual embryonic stem cells too or at least some GFP expression.
Here is the montage of all the entries.
