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GLIMmer of Life
17 September 2017

GLIMmer of Life

This brightly coloured ball is a cow embryo, except it’s not...not really. Like many microscopy pictures, this is a reconstruction of how light falls on something tiny. Sometimes though, pictures from inside living tissue can be fuzzy, because light bounces around inside creating a sort of 'cloud'. Here, gradient light interference microscopy (GLIM) aims gentle pulses of laser light at different depths in the embryo, piecing together a set of pictures into a detailed 3D model. Researchers sliced the top off this virtual embryo so they can peer inside at the earliest stages of life, spotting any problems. GLIM could be a gentle and safe way for predicting which human embryos are most suitable for in vitro fertilisation, raising the chance of conceiving for millions of hopeful couples.

Written by John Ankers

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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