4 May 2018
Each year, the Malaghan Institute runs an in-house competition celebrating the amazing things captured down the end of a microscope. Master’s student Anna Mooney faced stiff competition in taking first place for her image of a mouse lymph node.
Anna says her image, Lymph Glowed, shows a glowing lymph node in the process of antibody production following vaccination. “The B cell follicle (purple) is interspersed with germinal centres (pink). In the germinal centres, B cells are in a rigorous competition, undergoing intense rounds of mutation to try and improve the quality of their antibody. Their judges, the T cells (green), can be seen speckled throughout germinal centres. Only B cells with the best antibodies will be favoured by T cells to win the prize, differentiating to an antibody-secreting plasma cell to fight infection.”
The Malaghan Institute would like to thank the sponsors of this competition, Interlab, Invitro and Vic Books.