Science as art: Chromosomes dividing

I thought I'd try something a little different for this week by keeping all of my new shots on a "science as art" theme.

This is a shot I took at work a few years ago on a fluorescence microscope. In the image, you are looking at the nuclei of mouse cells, which I have stained with a blue DNA dye called DAPI.

There are two nuclei in the middle of this shot. The one on the right is the nucleus of a normal, resting cell. The nucleus on the left, which looks kind of like two blobs close together, is in the middle of cell division. In technical terms, we'd say that we've captured this cell in anaphase of mitosis.

The blue strings in each blob in the nucleus on the left are the actual chromosomes, which are being pulled to two separate poles. Eventually, the cell membrane (which is invisible in this shot) would invaginate, and those two blue blobs from the cell on the left would become the nuclei of two new daughter cells (similar in appearance to the nondividing cell on the right).