The Art of Science Image Contest 2011 Winners

Biophysical Society members submitted over 50 images for the Society's first annual Image Contest, sponsored by Photometrics. The 10 finalist entries were displayed at the 55th Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, and attendees voted for their two favorite images. The prizes were donated by Asylum Research and winners were announced Wednesday, March 9, 2011.

1st Place

Jorge Bernardino de la Serna, Membrane Domains in Giant Liposomes

Laser Scanning Confocal and two photon inverted microscope. Each Liposome (20-50µm diameter approx.) contains a trace of fluorescent dye and iis made from the natural lipids and proteins that line the surface of the mammals lung alveoli without any chemical treatment. Each image was obtained from freely standing giant liposomes under different temperature and/or different lipo-protein composition of native pulmonary surfactant.

2nd Place

Eric di Luccio, Electrostatic QPRTase hexamer

1- Quinolinate phosphoribosyl transferase enzyme (BNA6) from S. cerevisiae. Hexamer with electrostatic calculations. Quinolinic acid phosphoribosyl transferase (QAPRTase, EC 2.4.2.19) is a 32 kDa enzyme encoded by the BNA6 gene in yeast and catalyzes the formation of nicotinate mononucleotide from quinolinate and 5-phosphoribosyl-1-pyrophosphate (PRPP). QAPRTase plays a key role in the tryptophan degradation pathway via kynurenine, leading to the de novo biosynthesis of NAD (+) and clearing the neurotoxin quinolinate. ref:  Comprehensive X-ray structural studies of the quinolinate phosphoribosyl transferase (BNA6) from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. di Luccio E, Wilson DK. Biochemistry. 2008 Apr 1;47(13):4039-50. Epub 2008 Mar 6. The image show the hexameric surface with electrostatic properties solved by APBS, visualized and rendered with VMD 1.8.7 (Mac OSX). The electrostatic field lines are displayed and are "emerging" out of each (6) actives sites.

3rd Place

Brigitte Papahadjopoulos, Niosome

FREEZE-FRACTURE ELECTRON MICROGRAPH OF A NIOSOME (Bar represents 100nm and the shadow direction is running from bottom to top). Niosomes are synthetic analogues of liposomes and formed by self-association of non-ionic surfactants. They excite interest because of their potential as vectors for delivering drugs, genetic material, and/or imaging moieties.