A picture of human photoreceptors won the 2020 CRTD Photo Contest and is the new decoration of the main entrance of the CRTD building. The picture was taken by Felix Wagner, a doctoral student in the MOKALAB.

The picture is one of many submitted for the 2020 CRTD Photo Contest. The prize? Having your picture featured as the new decoration of the main entrance of the building. Not surprisingly, the CRTD employees submitted a lot of outstanding pictures, making the competition fierce, and complicating the decision for the contest committee.

Felix submitted the winning picture with a catchy caption: Come in and see for yourself! The picture shows human photoreceptor neurons. These cells are part of our eyes and enable us to see. There are two photoreceptor types. Rods help us to see in dim light, while cones enable us to see in colour and at high resolution. Felix used a technique called immunostaining to label the photoreceptors with colours. All photoreceptor cells are blue and on top of that, the cones are specifically shown in green.

Although being human photoreceptors, the ones in the picture have actually never been inside a human eye. They are a part of a 350 day old retinal organoid that Felix has grown from human induced pluripotent stem cells in the laboratory of Prof. Mike O. Karl (MOKALAB) at CRTD. Such organoids closely resemble the actual structures in the human retina. Felix Wagner and other researchers at the CRTD use them as a model system to study neuronal degeneration and regeneration of the human retina.

Congratulations to Felix for winning the contest with an amazing picture! Now just “come in and see (it) for yourself!”