Motion of Individual Cells within Developing Frog Embryos
Resolved/X-ray Tomography Based on Diffraction Rather than Absorption/New
Methods for Developmental Biology
Classical X-ray radiographs provide information about
internal, absorptive structures of organisms such as bones. Alternatively,
X-rays can also image soft tissues throughout early embryonic development of
vertebrates. Related to this, a new X-ray method was presented recently in a
Nature article published by a German-American-Russian research team led by KIT.
For periods of about two hours, time-lapse sequences of cellular resolution were
obtained of three dimensional reconstructions showing developing embryos of the
African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). Instead of the absorption of X-rays, the
method is based on their diffraction (DOI: 10.1038/nature12116).