Second Place for The Oasis

‘The Art in Science’ Post-graduate researcher image competition, as part of the Creative Reactions project at the Pint of Science festival.

 The Oasis

Like people search for an oasis in the desert, so do these lung fibroblast cells seek biocompatible surfaces for attachment.
This image was taken as part of a study involving high throughput screening of biomaterials on the EPSRC Programme Grant in Next Generation Biomaterials Discovery at the University of Nottingham. Arsalan Latif, a PhD student on the Programme Grant, submitted this image of the microarray and came second place in ‘The Art in Science’ Post-graduate researcher image competition, as part of the Creative Reactions project at the Pint of Science festival. ‘The Oasis’ depicts adhesion of lung fibroblast cells on a circular adhesive polymer surface (700 μm diameter); printed on an otherwise non-adhesive glass slide. The cells are stained for cytoskeletal actin (green) and nuclei (blue). Cell attachment on biomaterials is an essential step towards evaluating biocompatibility. The attached cells show classical spindle-like morphology on the polymer surface; a positive indicator for biocompatibility.