Photo contest - Face of Digestion - fruit fly gut

Research Excellence: Face of Digestion

Photography by Emily Arbesfeld, undergraduate student,
Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
Mentor: Tanja Godenschwege, Ph.D.

The picture shows a double-labeled of the fruit fly gut. Animals were genetically modified to add a fluorescent-tag (blue color) to an endogenous protein, which has been linked to metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity. This allows for visualization and study expression differences of the protein in response to different diets, such as high sugar, high protein or no food. The specimen was also immunohistochemically labeled with antibodies against a structural gut protein (magenta color) to visualize the gut structure. Confocal microscopy was used to acquire images of each fluorescent label. Different colors were assigned to the labels of the two proteins and displayed as a merged image. Two inverted versions of the picture were assembled to make it look like Escher art. The research was supported by the Jupiter Life Sciences and the Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry.