12-Day-Old Fluorescent Sea Urchin Larva--2024 Open Voting Winner. In Art of Science

Caption: Coral fluorescence is stunning, but it also holds important information about the coral’s physiology Participant category: Graduate student Department: Scripps Institution of Oceanography For the first time, researchers have created fluorescent sea urchins that can be grown in the lab from eggs to adults. Each blue dot in this larva is the nucleus of a cell, marked by the gene H2B and tagged with the fluorescent protein mCerulean. The red pattern is a membrane dye. Fluorescent lines allow researchers to observe how genes change in a living animal more efficiently.