This is neither an award nor a sculpture. It’s the fruiting body of a slime mold – a structure that helps the slime mold reproduce and spread. Fruiting bodies contain spores that are released into the ...

The radiating, kaleidoscopic pattern you see here was once the living glass skeleton – the cell wall – of a single-celled organism called a diatom. These organisms absorb silicon from their ...

Don’t let this ghostly image frighten you. Though spectral-looking, this depiction of a thale-cress flower is the result of chemically clearing its outer tissue so you can see inside the flower. Don’t ...

This might be the youngest plant you will ever see: a brand-new thale-cress sprout, or germen, emerging from its seed casing – ready to take root and grow. This might be the youngest plant you will ...

This yawning abyss surrounded by colorful ovals is a cross section through the spore-bearing part of a fungus that’s a cousin of the famous (at least in culinary circles) porcini mushroom. Get a ...

Neurons communicate using electricity and chemistry. Most neurons are composed of three main parts, each of which plays a special role in this communication. First is the cell body, which is the ...

While this might look like an impressionistic painting of a lush bouquet, it’s actually a microscopic image of mold growing in a culture dish. In fact, if you’ve ever wondered what the fuzz on those ...

These golden strands look as if they could be the “amber waves of grain” extolled in the song “America the Beautiful.” But they’re actually spore-producing filaments, growing from a tangle of fibers ...

It looks as if this juvenile crab got a dye job at the salon – but it’s actually an image taken under ultraviolet light. Tiny crabs at this stage of their life cycle are free-floating. As adults, they ...

How many mantises do you see in this image? The two mantises shown are among the largest and smallest of all mantises. While they seem to be getting along fine, most mantises like to keep to ...

The green wormlike structures covering the blue cell in this image are individual Ebola virus particles. This is the virus that causes Ebola virus disease (EVD), also known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever; ...

The ER is the protein synthesis and processing center of a cell and is also responsible for the synthesis of some lipids. There are two types of ER in a cell – rough ER and smooth ER – that together ...