"Bacterial Flowers" by Lev Tsimring

When two very different strains of bacteria grow together, something miraculous happens

Diverse interactions among species within bacterial colonies lead to intricate spatiotemporal dynamics (ways they move through space and time), which can affect their growth and survival. These images show some of the complex structures that we discovered when we mixed together motile bacteria, Acinetobacter baylyi, and non-motile, Escherichia coli, and allowed them to grow on a soft agar surface for 24 hours or more starting from a little drop in the center of a Petri dish.

Lev Tsimring is a research scientist associated with the BioCircuits Institute at UC San Diego.

Contributor: Liyang Xiong

Related: L. Xiong, Y. Cao, R . Cooper, W.J. Rappel, J. Hasty, L. Tsimring. Flower-like patterns in multi-species bacterial colonies. eLife, 9: 48885 (2020).

"Seaweed Kaleidoscopes" by Adi Khen

Digitally-edited images of seaweed pressings with kaleidoscope effect

Seaweeds can be brown, red or green; calcified, fleshy or in between. Not only are they a main food source to herbivores such as fish, but they can also be used by humans for aquaculture, biofuels, pharmaceuticals and climate mitigation. These kaleidoscope photo edits were made using pressings of common seaweed species found in San Diego, including feather boa kelp (Egregia menziesii), the sea comb (Plocamium pacificum), giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) and chain-bladder kelp (Stephanocystis osmundacea).

Adi Khen is a graduate student associated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, Smith Lab.

To watch a video of Adi talking about how their seaweed pressings are made, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9AEv8hcIiM

"Jellyfish" by Maggie Yu

3D model of jellyfishes of diffusion tensor imaging

There are many ways to evaluate what is going on inside the human brain using methods like diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, I didn’t see any DTI implanted in animals, so I created a prototype of jellyfish DTI using three-dimensional design software.

Maggie Yu is an undergraduate student associated with the Departments of Cognitive Science and Visual Arts at UC San Diego.

"Energy Worms" by Anne Lyons

Watch an energy regulator on mitochondria, cellular powerhouses that go wherever energy is needed

Mitochondria are the part of cells responsible for producing energy using the sugars we get from food and the oxygen we breathe. This energy we have readily available at any point is monitored by a protein called AMPK. If we don't have a lot of energy available, AMPK tells other parts of the cell to focus less on building and more on breaking things down to create more energy. In this image, a fluorescent sensor that can detect when AMPK is "talking" or "quiet" was attached to the mitochondria. With certain lower energy conditions, AMPK talks louder and we see even greater brightness from the sensor in our images. Understanding this conversation AMPK starts is important in studying energy-related diseases like diabetes and cancer.

Anne Lyons is a graduate student associated with the Department of Bioengineering at UC San Diego, Jin Zhang Lab.

Contributors: Danielle Schmitt, Sohum Mehta and Jin Zhang

"A Non-Quiescent Ocean" by Mitchell Chandler

Beneath the surface, water movement in the ocean is more complex and variable than one may imagine

Depicted is how the movement of water across a shipping line between Japan and Hawaii in the North Pacific Ocean changes over time. Red represents water flowing northward and blue represents water flowing southward. The darker the color, the more water that is crossing the shipping line. The time period shown spans from 2004 to 2019.

Mitchell Chandler is a graduate student associated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

To watch Mitchell's 2022 UC San Diego Grad Slam preliminaries submission, "The arteries and veins of our ocean," go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypyz2wVxun4

"Disease Detection Inspired by Butterfly Photonics" by Loren Phillips

The properties of butterfly wings may help us understand how to better diagnose cancer

This image contains an arrangement of various images taken through a microscope. There is no color correction or grading, the color you see was captured under the microscope. The rainbow-like kaleidoscope pattern is created with dozens of images of butterfly wings as seen through a microscope through a Berek compensator. The central image is a tissue sample containing breast cancer. The colored squares are nanofabricated metasurfaces.

Loren Phillips is an undergraduate student associated with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego.

"Perovskite Crystals with a Gradient Composition" by Sheng Xu

Perovskite crystals with outstanding electron transport properties for next generation solar cells

Due to their remarkable charged carrier dynamics, hybrid halide perovskites (HHPs) have tremendous potential for the next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices. My group demonstrated chemical epitaxial growth of single crystal HHP thin films for the first time. We have also been able to create an unprecedented compositional gradient by continuously tuning the growth precursor composition. This compositional gradient generates a bandgap gradient along the thickness direction, which is necessary for efficient sunlight absorption and facilitates the dissociation and collection of carriers.

Sheng Xu is an associate professor associated with the Departments of Nanoengineering, Bioengineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego.

Contributor: Yusheng Lei