The winning image displays something we may see every day in an entirely new light. The third-place image highlights a mature colony of volvox algae, a type of tiny greenery that commonly grows in ...

Cell division ensures growth or renewal and is thus vital for all organisms. However, the process differs somewhat in animals, bacteria, fungi, plants, and algae. Until now, little was known about ...

Polarized light image of dopamine. Photograph: Spike Walker/Wellcome Images. Light micrograph of colonies of the green alga Volvox. Photograph: Spike Walker/Wellcome Images ...

The images, of embryos of a green alga called Volvox, make an ideal test case to understand how a remarkably similar process works in early animal development.

In this multicellular Volvox alga, the novel light sensor 2c-cyclop was labeled with fluorescence (green). It shows up in membranes around the nucleus.

Volvox is a spherical alga with about 2,000 cells and two cell types, into which the swimming and reproductive functions of the Chlamydomonas unicell have been segregated.

(A) Young Volvox adult, with about 2,000 small somatic cells in a monolayer at the surface, and nineteen large gonidia embedded in the extracellular matrix (ECM), just under the somatic cell layer.