Description

El Ojo de Fuego, the eye of fire, shows the fruit fly eye, with only the light-sensitive neurons labeled in red. These gossamer cells impart an exquisite sensitivity to light, which not only allows the fly to navigate the world and avoid predation, but also regulate its daily rhythms of activity.

Ensheathing these photoreceptors, is a network of support cells, visible here as the faint-green whisps circumscribing the blaze.

To capture this image, a genetically-encoded fluorescent marker was expressed in the fly’s photoreceptor cells. The dissected eye was then visualized via confocal microscopy, with subsequent enhancements to contrast made in ImageJ.