Scientists Record Fruit Fly Larva Development in 3D With New Microscope

Posted on June 4, 2012

Scientists filmed a fruit fly embryo in development using a new microscope, the MuVi-SPIM. The embryo was filmed from two-and-a-half hours old until it walked away from the microscope as a larva.

The new microscope, called Multi-View SPIM, or MuVi-SPIM for short, enables scientists to image rapid biological processes in thick samples at unprecedented detail. It builds upon the Selective-Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) technology developed at EMBL a few years ago. Like SPIM, the new microscope shines a thin sheet of light on the embryo, illuminating one layer of a sample like this embryo at a time, to obtain an image of the whole sample with minimal light-induced damage. The microscope takes four full images from different angles.

Lars Hufnagel, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, says, "This video shows a fruit fly embryo from when it was about two-and-a-half hours old until it walked away from the microscope as a larva, 20 hours later. It shows all the hallmarks of fruit fly embryonic development in three dimensions."

The video shows cells on the embryo's belly dive in to form what's known as the ventral furrow. Other cells can then be seen moving around the embryo's rear end to its back, in a process called convergent extension. The video also shows a process known as dorsal closure, when an opening also appears in the embryo's back and the surrounding cells close the gap. Take a look:

The research was published in the journal, Nature Methods.

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