Skip to main content

Opening a Window to an Unseen World

YouTube
Main Content

Researchers in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Electron and Confocal Microscopy Unit can magnify a cell’s internal structures to 200,000 times their size, flash freeze mites in liquid nitrogen to create striking “snapshots” as they feed, and create color-enhanced images that show a virus infecting its host. The resulting images help scientists determine how agricultural pests and pathogens feed, reproduce, respond to threats, and survive.

A collection of tropical and subtropical flat mites from Australia, Brazil, and the United States that are pests of apple, pear, citrus, coffee, eucalyptus, oak, and palm trees. (D4051-1)

Images like this one – of a flat mite that feeds on coffee plants – have won scientific photography awards for the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Unit, graced the covers of prestigious scientific journals, and enhanced our scientific understanding of many of the microbes, pests, and pathogens that attack crops, infect livestock, and make people sick. (D4049-1)

A sampling of the unit’s digital photo album shows the eclectic nature of its efforts.

< >

A Sarcocystis parasite that causes millions of dollars in livestock losses every year. (D4047-1)

< >

Fluorescent labeling is used to show the interaction (yellow) between a viral protein and a host protein in a tobacco plant cell. Chloroplasts show as red. (D4048-1)

< >

A feather mite seen in color for the first time, obtained from a 70-year-old hornbill specimen stored at the Chicago Field Museum. (D4050-1)

< >

A plant virus found in peppers that is distantly related to the rabies virus. (D4052-1)

The team also has a unique 3D printing capability that allows them to transform the images they create into hand-size 3D models that are the most structurally accurate models of mites and other organisms currently available. The researchers hope that one day they will be able to upload the 3D files to an online database so that anyone with a 3D printer can reproduce them to use as instructional aids, in research, or for scientific outreach.

< >

The team that works on 3D modeling: Electron & Confocal Microscopy Unit director Gary Bauchan (front), entomologist Ronald Ochoa, biologist Joseph Mowery (center), IT specialist Christopher Pooley (back left), and ORISE postdoctoral fellow Connor Gulbronson. Here they are using the laser-scanning confocal microscope to make an accurate 3D image of a predatory mite, which is then used with the 3D printer to create the models. (Stephen Ausmus, D4044-1)

< >

Several 3D printed mites. (D4045-1)

< >

Confocal laser scanned microscopy image prior to 3D printing. (D4046-1)