Amazing Video of ‘Water Bear’ Riding Worm Among Microscopic Contest Winners

The winners of a microscopic video competition have been announced, and among the remarkable entries is an incredible clip of a tiny tardigrade riding a roundworm.
The Nikon Small World in Motion contest, now celebrating its 14th year, recognizes proficiency and excellence of video taken under the microscope.
Run by Nikon Instruments Inc.—the U.S. microscopy arm of Nikon Healthcare, a firm that develops and manufactures optical, digital imaging technology and software for biomedical applications—this year’s competition received 370 video entries from 40 countries around the world.
The competition was initially launched in response to technological advances that enabled the recording of movies or digital time-lapse photography through the microscope.
The first-place prize this year was awarded to Bruno Vellutini of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany for his video of a fruit fly embryo. The mesmerizing clip captures a phenomenon known as “mitotic waves” that is ubiquitous in embryonic development. This phenomenon ensures that cell divisions are synchronized across the large expanse of the embryo.
Vellutini’s research is focused on understanding how embryos develop from a single cell—a process fundamental to all animal life. This research has evolutionary implications, but could also be applicable to the field of medical science, particularly when it comes to investigating rare neurological disorders, limb malformations and cancer in humans.
“The beauty of basic research in biology is that what we learn in one organism is often applicable to others and has the potential to contribute to the understanding of human diseases,” Vellutini said in a press release.
“Fruit fly embryos are in our homes, developing in our kitchens and our trash bins, undergoing the same processes as shown in the video,” he said. “I believe the video is particularly impactful because it shows us how these fascinating cellular and tissue dynamics are happening every day, all around us—even in the most mundane living beings.”
Second place in the competition went to Jay McClellan of Saranac, Michigan, for his stunning video of water droplets evaporating from the wing scales of a peacock butterfly.
The third-placed entry was a video of a special type of central nervous system cell in the spinal cord of a zebrafish captured by Jiaxing Li, a postdoctoral Fellow with Oregon Health and Science University.
“A single cell in the spinal cord of a zebrafish is labeled with a fluorescent marker. The cell has a body and several extensions around it. It moves around, changing its extensions to explore the environment and interact with nearby cells,” Li told Newsweek, explaining what can be seen in the clip.
Fourth place was shared between Ignasi Vélez Ceron, Francesc Sagués and Jordi Ignés-Mullol with the Department of Materials Science and Physical Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, Spain, for their hypnotic video.
The clip shows a dense layer of microtubules being moved by motor proteins. Microtubules are structural proteins found in cells that have a cylindrical shape. Motor proteins, meanwhile, are proteins that convert chemical energy into mechanical work.
To create motion in the microtubules, the scientists added motor proteins and ATP—an energy-carrying molecule found in the cells of all living things. The ATP provided chemical energy to the motor proteins.
“By having a dense layer of [microtubules] and providing them with activity, we obtain a system with collective motion,” Ceron told Newsweek. “As a consequence, this material spontaneously shows beautiful chaotic dynamics, as can be seen at the beginning of the video. However, what makes this video special is the appearance of friction. This simple action impedes the material from moving freely, causing it to have to adapt to the new situation, thus producing the mesmerizing textures that are seen in the video.”
Fifth place in the competition went to Quinten Geldhof of Winthrop, Massachusetts, for his video of a baby tardigrade riding a nematode, or roundworm.
Tardigrades—also known as “water bears” or “moss piglets”—are a group of microscopic, water-dwelling, eight-legged creatures that are among the most resilient known to science, capable of surviving in extreme conditions.
Measuring between just 0.1 and 1 millimeter in size, tardigrades are found in a wide range of environments around the world, including the deep sea and the Arctic.
There are around 1,300 known tardigrade species, each of which has their own particular set of specializations that enable them to withstand extremely hot or cold temperatures, very high or low pressures, extended starvation, severe dehydration, or other conditions that would be lethal to other animals. Scientists have even found that some tardigrades can survive exposure to the vacuum of space at low-Earth orbit.
Nematodes, meanwhile, are a type of worm found in nearly every environment on Earth, from soil and water to plants and animals. They have simple, tube-like bodies and are typically very small—sometimes microscopic.
Nikon Small World in Motion is the video component of the long-standing Nikon Small World still-photography competition, which has been running for half a century.
“For the last 50 years, Nikon Small World has been a leading showcase of cutting-edge microscopy and artistic imaging. Since its inception in 2011, Small World in Motion has been a vital component of this gallery,” Eric Flem, senior manager, communications and CRM at Nikon Instruments, said in the press release.
“As we enter a new era of the competition, we remain committed to highlighting the boundaries of innovation in scientific imaging,” he said. “Nikon’s dedication to advancing science and art is especially evident in Dr. Vellutini’s winning entry, which stands as a testament to this legacy, capturing a mesmerizing movement within the microscopic world that helps deepen our understanding of a process that shapes life itself.”
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