Honorable Mention: Owls Having Guts

The picture shows part of the Drosophila melanogaster midgut, which releases hormones analogous to GLP-1, also known as Ozempic, in response to a high sugar diet. The guts transgenically express a fluorescent maker for the gene expression of the Drosophila Attractin homolog. Attractin is a transmembrane protein that has been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes and neurodegeneration. In addition, all nuclei of the guts were labeled with DAPI dye. The image was taken with a 20x objective using a confocal microscope. The overlays of both fluorescent labels in four iterations, arranged to look like owls, show that the Drosophila Attractin gene is expressed in a large subset of midgut cells. The research was supported by the Jupiter Life Sciences and the Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry.