Celebrating beautiful scientific imagery!
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- We put a spotlight on our Image of the Year winner in the CiteAb Awards
- What makes this image remarkable?
- We take a look back at previous winners
Our 2022 Image of the Year was too good to not feature in our blog this year.
Our winner was Derek Sung et al. from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, using reagents from Abcam and Cell Signaling Technology. The striking, winning image is from their research paper: Mutations in Non-muscle Myosin 2A Disrupt the Actomyosin Cytoskeleton in Sertoli Cells and Cause Male Infertility.
We have been running the Image of the Year Award for 3 years now, with the aim of celebrating the beautiful outputs generated when the correct reagents are used successfully in some really fascinating research.
In 2019, we began collecting published images at CiteAb (you can find out more about this service for suppliers here in our webinar). As we started to collect more and more images, we realised how striking these could be, and we were really interested to learn about the interesting research they gave insights into. As a result, the Image of the Year category was born, and it has quickly become one of our favourite awards.
The 2022 Winner:
The research behind this image delved into mutations linked with infertility, and came to conclusions about proteins necessary for fertility. Non-muscle myosin 2A (NM2A) mutations can lead to a variety of conditions including deafness, cataracts and glomerulosclerosis. Sung et al. introduced common mutations into NM2A in a mouse model. Interestingly, one such mutant was shown to cause infertility in male mice, alongside reduced testis size and abnormal Sertoli cells. NM2A and its paralog NM2B were ultimately concluded to be necessary for testes development and fertility.
The Sertoli cell is pictured in the striking Image of the Year, highlighting the architectural beauty in their columnar morphology and tubular nature. An often overlooked cell type, it is very important for structural integrity in developing sperm.
Alicia Cooper, Head of Citations and Images, said ‘We are so thrilled to have run the Image of the Year Award again this year and recognise the very worthy winners. Immunofluorescence images in particular are really impressive, which this year’s image clearly demonstrates. Congratulations to Derek Sung and his colleagues, as well as Abcam and Cell Signaling Technology for providing the reagents!‘
Previous winners
You can also see our past winners below: Flavia Millesi and Radtke lab, Medical University of Vienna with reagents from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Agilent Technologies, taking home the prize in 2021, and our 2020 winners Ali Ertürk, Chechen Pan and colleagues with reagents from Miltenyi Biotec and ChromoTek.
Both images are beautiful in their own way, and have come from some fascinating research. Do head over to our awards website to learn a little bit more about them.
Got any striking images?
Look out for our ‘image of the month’ post over on our social media channels. Each month we showcase a published image collected and cropped by CiteAb, highlighting the researcher and the products used.
Finally, if you have an image you’re particularly proud of, remember to check back in on the CiteAb Awards for 2023 where we invite all researchers or suppliers to enter!
- Skye and the CiteAb team
