Mickaël Le is a research engineer in Jean Livet's team. Fascinated by the world of living organisms for a long time, he has been working on the development of neuronal circuits and more specifically on the lineage of cortical cells. Lineage is a technique that makes it possible to retrace the developmental history of a cell. He is looking for a way to illustrate these lineages with transgenes, isolated gene sequences.

His image, "Medusa Nebula in a Cell Space", shows membranes of cell lineages labelled with fluorescent proteins. The labelling is done by the Brainbow technique, a transgene that contains proteins of three colours that will be expressed randomly under the microscope.

This image was taken with an epifluorescence microscope, which can take fluorescence images of cells or tissues magnified up to x40. A special box has been used to control the temperature of the sample during observation, which is useful for example when observing fresh tissue. This microscope can be used to map samples to identify areas of interest before 3D imaging in suitable microscopes such as confocal.

Portrait and text by Delphine Menard