A Sea of Cells (2019)

The winner of this year's annual image competition, run by the British Heart Foundation and highlighting some of the latest research, is entitled ‘A Sea of Cells’. While this image could be mistaken for the thick brushstrokes of a Vincent van Gogh painting bringing to life an ocean bloom, it is in fact a close-up of smooth muscle cells that surround the blood vessels in mice.

The smooth muscle cells, which are partly responsible for the control of blood flow by narrowing or widening blood vessels, are marked with differently coloured fluorescent proteins. Tracking the ebb and flow of different proteins in the cells over time can tell scientists about their origins and ability to divide, and help them to understand how the smooth muscle in blood vessels grows.

The winning researcher, Iona Cuthbertson, is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. She is exploring the ways in which rare types of smooth muscle cells in the walls of arteries rapidly grow after injury. Iona is investigating what the rapid growth means in relation to conditions such as atherosclerosis—as readers will know, where there is a build-up of fatty substances inside arteries, associated with increased stroke and heart attack risk.