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This image shows muscles from Drosophila melanogaster, or the fruit fly. The normal striated appearance of muscle tissue (gray) is beginning to show regions of abnormal protein accumulation (blue). If this abnormal accumulation continues, the muscle will further degenerate and lose its ability to contract.

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This image depicts the smooth muscle cells of a cerebral artery, illustrating mitochondria (magenta) along with the nuclei (blue). Under healthy conditions, mitochondria serve as powerplants for the cell to control the arterial diameter and regulate blood flow. When mitochondria are injured by oxidative stress, they sense the damage and initiate cell death. When exposed to hydrogen peroxide, these studies examine how females protect cerebral arteries from mitochondrial disruption and cell death.

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This image reflects the beauty of science through research on preeclampsia (PE), a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy that affects up to 10% of pregnancies worldwide.

The four vessels displayed show the progression of cerebrovascular inflammation in normal pregnancies when compared to preeclamptic exposure. The left is an image of normal pregnancy, while the right shows a preeclamptic pregnancy.

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This image shows the slow formation of crystals after purification. This material is an intermediate of a synthetic pathway to make a labeled standard of an active pharmaceutical intermediate (API) to use as a potential oncology candidate for glioblastoma. The labeled material is an important aspect of drug discovery as it helps to map the metabolic pathway of API digestion.

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This artwork depicts the experience of entering an operating room for the first time to observe a surgical procedure as an ethnographic researcher and artist. In using visual art as part of the research process, they can better describe the essence and characteristic of what they observe and encapsulate the embodied experience of the research process in surgical medical education by uncovering nuances not visible through words. Art provides the artist-researcher with new ways to explore complex medical education and surgery issues.

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There are parts of our DNA that are largely unexplored. By making the DNA in the human chromosomes fluorescent, we can study these parts and fully understand their role in disease. This painting shows in black a human karyotype, which is a complete set of chromosomes visualized with a fluorescent stain. The four yellow chromosomes represent those carrying these parts co-opted in diseases like cancer.

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This image is a fluorescent picture of neurons stained with an adenovirus. The virus dyes living mitochondria (yellow) and mitochondria undergoing mitophagy, or the removal of aged or damaged mitochondria (red).

This research focuses on how amyloid precursor protein, an essential protein in Alzheimer’s Disease, affects how the cell maintains mitochondrial health. Allowing us to help identify the role of amyloid precursor protein and its effects on the cell’s health.

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The image shows the inside cells of a plant stem taken with a fluorescence microscope. This research examines the structure of the stem by looking at different colors of light emitted by specific molecules. This research helps to better understand how the plant stem is built and organized at a microscopic level and uncover essential details about the plant’s growth and development, which can be helpful in various applications like improving crop yield or understanding how plants respond to their environment.

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The beautiful, green snake in this image is an Asian Vine Snake. Their most prominent trait is their keyhole-shaped pupils. Snakes have feeble vision because they lack many of the structures humans have that give us binocular vision (both eyes work to create the images we see). Out of the 4000+ species of snakes on earth, vine snakes are the only ones to have evolved a keyhole-shaped pupil, which makes up for the structures they do not possess, making these snakes the only ones to have binocular vision like humans.

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This artistic image of a star comprises six different colored microtubule “asters” in a heart muscle cell. A TRP (“trip”) ion channel is at the center of each aster, which leads to the white color. The remaining stars are cardiac lysosomes forming a microscopic universe within the cell. When TRP channels are active, the heart is damaged, which causes cardiac arrhythmias. The goal of the art is to make the star bright, while medical research aims to block TRP channels and make the star dim.

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This image was obtained from the liver of a donor who was acquired through Kansas City University’s Gift Body Program. For this research, lesions on the donor’s liver with a known case of rare invasive metaplastic breast cancer were biopsied. Expecting this image to show breast metastasis, it was surprising that one lesion revealed a carcinoid tumor separate from the widely invasive breast tumor. In the histologic image provided, the deep purple cells of the carcinoid tumor (left) adjoin pink liver tissue (right).

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This image shows a tin surface after solidifying in an open-face mold. It features a large dendrite near the center. Dendrites help predict the mechanical properties of metals, with the smaller spacing of the dendrite arms leading to improved mechanical properties.

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In this photo, stem cells isolated from fat tissue were seeded into tissue-mimetic porous hydrogels blocks. The stem cells were labeled with markers to show the internal structure (Green) of the cells, capture metabolic activity (Magenta), and identify the nucleus (Blue). The labels unveiled activity indicative of regenerative processes that could be used for wound healing and regenerative medicine applications. Hence, we see this “web of life” forming that can bring the potential of healing to patients around the world using their own stem cells.