Results from the MBL Embryology course image competition

Posted by the Node, on 9 September 2025

This year brought the return of our image competition with the MBL Embryology course at Woods Hole. Twenty impressive submissions were received from the 2025 cohort of students, with images ranging from polychaete worms to butterflies, squids and mice. This year, we had two winners, the winner of the popular vote and an Editor’s choice. Both winning images will be published on the front cover of  Development. Congratulations!

Among the great selection of images, Nicole Roos and Anthony Wokasch’s image of a mouse embryo stained for Sox9 (cyan), alpha-tubulin (yellow), and endomucin (magenta) received the most votes.

**Mouse embryo** – confocal
Nicole Roos and Anthony Wokasch
Mouse E10.5 embryo immunofluorescent staining of Sox9 (cyan), alpha-tubulin (yellow), and endomucin (magenta) protein. Image captured on Evident FV4000 point scanning confocal, lens UPLXAPO4X, na = 0.16, zoom = 1.04. Image processing conducted on Fiji.

Next up, our Editor’s choice winner was Arthur Boutillon’s ‘Embryonic eye of Anole lizard’. If this image looks familiar, it is because it is featured as the cover of Development’s current issue.

**Embryonic eye of an Anole lizard**
Arthur Boutillon
Embryonic eye of an Anole lizard stained for nuclei (DAPI, blue) and F-actin (Phalloidin, orange), imaged by spinning disc confocal microscopy and prossessed using ImageJ.

Thanks to everyone who appreciated these beautiful images and voted. Above all, we would like to thank all the following researchers for their contributions: Virginia Panara, Shirley Ee Shan Liau, Sonoko Mizuno, Ignacio Casanova-Maldonado, Max Makem, Johnny Vertiz, Arthur Boutillon, Anthony Wokasch, Aria Zheyuan Huang, Amartya Tashi Mitra, Nathanial Sweet, Paul Maier,  Shivangi Pandey, Marie Lebel, Chloe Kuebler, Nicole Roos.