Breaking Rank: How Identical Cells Take on Different Fates

Breaking Rank: How Identical Cells Take on Different Fates

Collections: Image Award Winners

2012 Award Winner

Ni Ji
Van Oudenaarden Lab

Koch Institute at MIT, MIT Department of Biology, MIT Department of Physics

Epi-Fluorescence Micrograph 

A multicellular organism like a human develops, incredibly, from just one embryonic cell.  This image captures a snapshot of this process in a developing worm.  At this moment, two seemingly identical neural stem cells move apart and begin to give rise to cells that will be distinct and specialized in the adult worm.

Video

Ni Ji explains how and why she captured this snapshot of development in a worm.

More like this