The Illuminators: Scope for Change 2025

Microscope: Leica

As part of my research, I tested if my engineered thin films, about the thickness of a human hair, were safe for cells. This is the first step toward future medical use. This image shows HeLa cells, which are widely used in labs to check material safety. The test ended after three days and showed the cells stayed healthy on the films, but I kept the samples a little longer out of curiosity and took this image on the seventh day. By then, the cells crowded together with no space to spread, some fading while others endured. A moment beyond the test.

Microscope: Zeiss ELYRA

Cells in our body come in many shapes and sizes, and this can affect how molecules move inside them. We can control a cell's shape using micropatterning, and guiding it into a crossbow-like shape makes it easier to study molecule movement. In this movie, the glowing spots show transferrin, a protein that carries iron, moving through the patterned cell. This approach allows us to investigate how cells transport different molecules in a controlled manner.

Microscope: Zeiss LSM800

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes (blue) extend their arms to wrap around blood vessels (image centre, circular layers of magenta + yellow) in the brain. This contact helps control what enters the brain, playing a quiet but crucial role in protecting and supporting neural function.

Microscope: Hitachi SU1510

The sponge-like structure you see helps determine how firm, springy, or chewy a food product feels. By understanding and tailoring these microscopic networks, we can design healthier, more sustainable plant-based foods with textures people love to eat.

Microscope: Zeiss LSM 980

Ubiquitin is a protein that serves to identify and 'tag' unwanted proteins in cells so that the proteins may be degraded. While investigating how mouse eggs matured within the laboratory to eliminate unwanted proteins, we have observed large ubiquitin clusters (shown as red dots) external to the egg, specifically in the zona pellucida! The zona pellucida is the thick, protective layer that surrounds the egg and is the first layer of the egg that the sperm cell will have to penetrate to initiate fertilisation. The zona pellucida is surrounded by supporting somatic cells called cumulus cells (shown in purple), and string-like structures called transzonal projections (shown in green) which work together to deliver nutrients to the egg. It remains a question as to whether ubiquitin is associated with these structures, or if it represents a novel interface right at the borderline!

Microscope: Lucifer - TIRF (custom built)

I am working with a protein that makes tiny holes in our cells, causing the cells to swell up, which ultimately kills them. In this video we observe a type of pore-forming protein called gasdermin. In my lab, we are on an inquisitive journey to find out how fast this protein assembles into forming a hole. When a germ invades our cells, our cells get stressed out and try to kill the germ. This is when gasdermins come into action and start forming tiny pores in the cells. Specifically, the pores are formed in lipids, which are fat-like material that make up our cells.

While examining this protein, a fault in my salt solution resulted in the stretching of some of the nice, rounded bubbles made of lipids (red) into elongated strings. In green is the pore forming protein, gasdermin, attacking these lipids, making it appear as a heavy commute on a one-way street!

Microscope: Nova Nano SEM 450

This 2D silicon and oxygen-based layered nanomaterial (super tiny versions of material) is capturing attention for its promising potential in energy storage (battery or capacitor) due to their high surface area and semiconductive nature. A semiconductor is a material that partly conducts electricity — more than an insulator but less than a metal. The performance of a siloxene can be highly tailorable according to the desired application. This material typically appeared as stacked sheets (like stacked papers) at microscale, but here it shows an unusual shape resembling a mini love.

Microscope: Zeiss LSM 800

Gene therapy can give cells new instructions to make useful proteins. Here, it was used to make rat tongue muscles produce light-sensitive proteins: when exposed to light, they contract and open the airway. This approach could one day offer a new treatment for sleep apnoea, where current therapies often fall short.

Left image: Temporarily reducing the body’s natural immune defences allows the proteins to be expressed strongly over a long period, shown by the bright red signal. The blue ‘dots’ identify cell DNA-containing nuclei, which could belong to muscle cells, immune cells, or other cell types. For instance, the wavy diagonal line of blue cells indicates the animal’s taste buds.

Right image: Without adequate immune suppression, chronic inflammation can develop. The dense blue DNA-containing nuclei in this image represent immune cells (T cells and macrophages) infiltrating the muscle. Their presence reduces light-sensitive protein expression, shown by the faint red signal, leading to weak muscle contractions under light stimulation and ineffective airway dilation.

Microscope: FEI Nova NanoSEM 450

In the silent microscopic world, these open “mouths” seem to release cries frozen in time.  In fact, this picture is the char (a carbon-rich residue formed during burning) of polyurethane foam coated with MXene and chitosan. The hollow structure that once gave the foam lightness now tells a new story: the char layer helps slow fire spread and highlights the role of advanced flame-retardant materials in improving safety.

Microscope: FEI Nova NanoSEM 450

‘Maze After the Flame’ shows what remains when fire meets a protected material. This close-up of soft foam with a fire-protective coating reveals tiny walls and passages still standing after intense heat—a miniature maze that shows how the right protection helps materials keep their shape long after the flames have passed.

Microscope: FEI Nova NanoSEM 450

‘Specter in the Ash’ looks like a faceless figure cloaked in shadow, arms outstretched. In reality, it is a close-up of foam protected by a flame-retardant coating. Even after fire, the structure remains, its shapes forming what seems like a ghost emerging from the smoke. It’s a reminder that protection can leave beauty—and mystery—behind, even in the harshest conditions.

Microscope: Zeiss LSM 880

This artwork represents the outer structural features of a healthy mouse eye which contains three different tissues: cornea, limbus and conjunctiva. This image represents multiple images stitched together to create a wholistic view of these tissue boundaries, which almost appear as a jungle (or open to your interpretation!).

The trees and branches sprouting from the side represent blood vessels (yellow) and nerves (red) in an area of the eye called the "limbus". The bright green colour embedded with nerves on each margin represents a specific protein that marks the beginning of conjunctiva tissue. The beginning of horizontally directed nerves marks the cornea boundary while the feeling of being "trapped" captured by the web-like appearance of nerves in the middle depicts an intricate corneal nerve supply that accounts for its lack of blood vessels.

By visualising the eye in this way, we can better understand how its structural organisation aids tissue function, in order to develop new therapies for corneal diseases.

Microscope: Leica Stellaris 8

Meiosis is the process by which one cell divides twice to produce four cells. This process only occurs in germ cells, which are the cells that go on to produce oocytes (eggs) in biological females and sperm in biological males. Here we can see several sperm-precursor cells that will eventually produce sperm at different stages of meiosis. The circular shape is due to the cells being encapsulated in the seminiferous tubule where the sperm develops, although sperm is not shown in this image. The image you see here highlights the many possibilities of giving rise to life, as each of these cells, once converted into sperm, and if combined with an egg, will give rise to a living being.

Microscope: Leica M205FA Stereomicroscope

Pictured are mosquitoes infected with malaria parasites that are genetically modified to express a green fluorescent protein. After a mosquito ingests infected blood, the parasites invade the mosquito gut wall and develop into cysts in which the parasites grow. A week later, hundreds of green cysts can be seen glowing through the mosquito’s abdomen under a fluorescence microscope. Thousands of parasites within the cysts burst free and invade the mosquito salivary glands, ready to infect a new host when the mosquito takes another blood meal. By making malaria parasites glow with fluorescent proteins, we can use microscopes to watch how the parasites develop, spread and respond to treatments and interventions such as drugs and vaccines. Understanding the biology of malaria parasites allows us to uncover their weaknesses, paving the way for new strategies to treat, prevent, and ultimately eradicate this deadly disease.

Microscope: Zeiss LSM 900

This is a 400x original magnification image showing the staining pattern of two biological markers located in the healthy conjunctiva, which is the thin layer covering the white of the eye and the inside of the eyelids. The magenta shows a novel gene currently under research, and the cyan shows Cytokeratin 8 (K8), a thread-like protein that gives conjunctival cells their shape and strength.

K8 is one of many biomarkers clinically used to diagnose conjunctivalisation, a disease process where abnormal tissue from the conjunctiva grows over the cornea, resulting in blindness. Unfortunately, these biomarkers are not always reliable for clinical diagnosis as they can also be found on other areas of the eye or be naturally present under healthy conditions. In our study, we found that the novel biomarker (magenta) appears on diseased corneal tissue of mice but not in their healthy corneal tissue. This specificity could be key to identifying the mechanism driving conjunctivalisation and allow for better patient outcome by providing earlier diagnosis and therapeutic interventions.

Artistically, these colours evoke the image of a fire burning in the rain - a reminder that even under diseased conditions, nature continues to shine. In the same way, we too can choose to shine in the face of scientific challenges, letting persistence light our path towards discovery.