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11 May 2019: The LMB’s Tissue Culture Lab prepares big batches of Earle's Balanced Salt Solution for trypsin. The solution seen being prepared on day 132 of #LMB365 will be used all around the building to dissociate adherent cells from the vessel in which they

11 Jan 2019: John Sutherland's group in the PNAC Division is trying to recreate the steps that led to life and took place on Earth 4.5 billion years ago. In day 11 of #LMB365 we see a pair of flasks in which components of potentially primitive genetic materials

17 Nov 2019: If you have ever wondered how all the glass in the atrium of the LMB is kept clean, this photo for day 321 of #LMB365 shows you how. This is carried out biennially and takes two people 8 days to clean all the glass, including the fascia boards, high

20 Jul 2019: A crocheted stag’s head looks out into the atrium on day 201 of #LMB365 giving a glimpse of this years Art and Craft show. The annual event gives staff at the LMB a chance to showcase their artistic and creative talents and for others to see a

6 Jul 2019: PhD students at the LMB are registered with the University of Cambridge, and are therefore automatically members of a college. This photo for day 187 of #LMB365 shows members of Bill Schafer’s lab celebrating the end of another day in the LMB by

27 Jun 2019: LMB researchers will be telling the public about their work on the origin of life at The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. On day 178 of #LMB365 we see Phil Holliger being interviewed about the exhibition. Learn more about our exhibit at https

25 Mar 2019: Sometimes after a long day in the lab you are lucky enough to experience a beautiful sight as you leave the building. This photo for day 85 of #LMB365 was taken by Lesley Drynan as the sun set for another day and the multi-coloured light was

27 May 2019: On this day in 1962, HM The Queen officially opened the first LMB building. For day 148 of #LMB365, The Queen is seen arriving at the entrance to the LMB. Max Perutz, in the foreground, greets The Queen, while LMB staff inside the building can be

5 Jan 2019: Day 5 of #LMB365 is a surface view of a Drosophila embryonic blastoderm from @GhislainGillard and @katjaroeper in Cell Biology @CellBiol_MRCLMB. This shows membranes of cells stained for several proteins after cellularisation. Actin (magenta) is

18 Feb 2019: Day 50 of #LMB365 shows a spinning centrifuge exerting outward force on the samples within it. This principle is exploited by biochemists at the LMB to separate the contents within a cell by their relative size. The separated components can each be

3 Jun 2019: On day 155 of #LMB365 it appears the LMB bees have been busy. This is a honey frame from one of our hives two thirds full and capped over. Once full this can be extracted and the honey bottled ready for use. We hope to have LMB honey available

8 Apr 2019: Day 99 of #LMB365 is a journal cover design by Lesley McKeane in the LMB’s Visual Aids team. The selective coupling of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to specific G proteins is critical to trigger the appropriate physiological response. This

31 Aug 2019: Day 243 of #LMB365 shows an SDS-PAGE cake baked by Jaslyn Wong in Roger Williams’ group in the PNAC Division. She hoped to motivate her colleagues to keep trying to get crystalsof Rag proteins that activate the cancer drug target mTOR. Protein

29 Aug 2019: The LMB Group Leaders recently went on a 2-day retreat to discuss their vision for the future of their research and the LMB as a whole. This included discussions about matters impacting on staff, particularly women in science. The female group

16 Apr 2019: Georges Kohler was born on this day in 1946, in Munich, Germany. On day 107 of #LMB365 he is pictured with César Milstein. Georges and César were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1984, for their work on the principle for

16 May 2019: In this image for day 137 of #LMB365 seam cells are highlighted in green in the middle of a young (larval) C. elegans worm. The seam cells act like stem cells and during larval development these cells undergo asymmetrical divisions and either

28 Dec 2019: Day 362 of #LMB365 shows the LMB Executive Committee after a recent meeting. The Committee is made up of the Director, Deputy Director, Chief Operating Officer, and the Heads of Divisions. They meet 4 times a year to make decisions on the running of

21 Jan 2019: Day 21 #LMB365 is a Max Perutz Word Cloud. Max was the founder and first Chairman of the MRC Unit that became the LMB. He determined the structure of haemoglobin and won the 1962 Nobel Prize @NobelPrize, jointly with John Kendrew, for their work on

16 Feb 2019: To understand processes at the molecular levels, basic components of the cell can be purified, crystallised and then visualised with X-rays to allow their molecular structure to be determined. These crystals, photographed for day 48 of #LMB365 by

30 Mar 2019: The LMB cares for the environment and has an active environmental committee consisting of scientific and support staff and students. We have various trees and flowering plants that the LMB bees can enjoy. Strolling to work on a sunny spring day

4 Sep 2019: Apple trees around the LMB building, originally planted in 2011 as 2-3 year old trees, are starting to mature. They are now heavy with fruit, as seen in this photo taken by Laura Easton onday 247 of #LMB365. The trees planted around the end of the

8 May 2019: Day 129 of #LMB365 shows Michael Levitt when he joined the scientific staff at the LMB in 1974. Michael was born on this day in 1947, in Pretoria, South Africa. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013 for the development of multiscale

22 Mar 2019: Using cryo-EM, researchers in the groups of Sjors Scheres and Michel Goedert determined the atomic structure of tau filaments that were extracted from the brain of an individual with Alzheimer’s disease. The resulting structure is shown on day 82

30 Aug 2019: Day 242 of #LMB365 by Dana Galili in Greg Jefferis’ group in the Neurobiology Division shows interactions between fruit flies. These videos are automatically tracked using computer vision and machine learning methods, to closely inspect their

18 Apr 2019: The image for day 109 of #LMB365 is provided by Ben Sutcliffe in the LMB’s Light Microscopy Facility. When they need to align the laser on the custom mSPIM light sheet microscope they use a solution of highlighter pen in water so that they can see

27 Aug 2019: The Electronics Workshop at the LMB designs many items of custom equipment to facilitate the scientific research. Their Computer Aided Design & Manufacturing (CADCAM) systems are invaluable in providing swift and accurate development, none more so

3 Oct 2019: This new structure shows how the unwrapped DNA provides the major interaction interface between CCAN and the Cenp-A nucleosome. ... This new structure provides a framework for understanding decades of biochemical and genetic studies on the centromere and

23 Jan 2019: Day 23 of #LMB365 shows the growth of mammalian cells for the production of a human glycoprotein used to study the synthesis of hormones which play an essential role in metabolism and development. Work is carried out in a Class II safety cabinet to

1 Sep 2019: On day 244 of #LMB365 is Richard Henderson who #OTD in 1974 started his research group at the LMB. He is pictured here in the 1970s with the X-ray camera rotating anode. Richard would predominately use electron microscopy for his work on membrane

25 Apr 2019: This image for day 116 of #LMB365 is a dish of negatively stained grids, discarded after use in the general-use Spirit, which is a 120 kV transmission electron microscope (TEM). Samples are applied to the grid, then surrounded by heavy metal stain

7 Jun 2019: Day 159 of #LMB365 shows Francis Crick in the 1960s, when he was joint head of the LMB’s Molecular Genetics (now Cell Biology) Division. Francis was born on this day in 1916, in Northampton. He was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or

11 Dec 2019: On day 345 of #LMB365 we have a picture by Katja Röper in the Cell Biology Division. Shown is a confocal image of the two tissue primordia that will form the tubes of the salivary glands in a Drosophila embryo, a model system for the formation of

29 Nov 2019: The Tecnai F20 at the LMB is a 200 keV TEM equipped with a field emission gun and Falcon 3 direct detector, and is mainly used for screening cryo-EM samples before data acquisition on the Titan Krios microscopes. Day 333 of #LMB365 shows Aaron Tan

20 Jan 2019: Day 20 of #LMB365 is a model of myoglobin displayed in LMB’s atrium and made for LMB Nobel Laureate, John Kendrew @NobelPrize. It is an oxygen storing protein found in muscles, in particular in ocean and diving mammals, and was the first protein

29 Jul 2019: The LMB Graduate Student Association (GSA) held its first ever LGBT+ Happy Hour social event recently, which was open to everyone across the LMB. This photo for day 210 of #LMB365 shows some of the attendees enjoying themselves in the early evening

3 Apr 2019: Day 94 of #LMB365 image by Philipp Schlegel (Jefferis lab, Neurobiology Division) shows olfactory projection neurons in the poppy seed-sized brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Each dot is one of ~57k axonal presynapses coloured by

21 Oct 2019: Day 294 of #LMB365 shows a bottle of Caveat mTOR, a hot sauce made from chillies grown on the windowsill of Roger Williams’ Lab. After picking, the chillies are lacto-fermented for a week with onion, garlic, and a few herbs and spices before

28 Feb 2019: This image for day 60 of #LMB365 shows a handful of pseudocoloured hippocampal neurons (brain cells) that have been specifically targeted with DNA expressing a fluorescent protein which has allowed Jake Watson to visualise them. In Ingo Greger’s

12 Mar 2019: This image for day 72 of #LMB365 shows the body wall muscle structure of the worm C. elegans using an F-actin dye. Soudi Imanikia in Rebecca Taylor’s group in the Neurobiology Division studies age-related muscular degeneration as part of their

19 Apr 2019: On day 110 of #LMB365 Soudabeh Imanikia in the Neurobiology Division took advantage of fluorescently labelled Caenorhabditis elegans worms to make them spell our name! C. elegans has been a model organism used at the LMB for many decades since

2 Oct 2019: Kiyoshi Nagai, Group Leader at the LMB and joint head of the Division of Structural Studies from 2001 to 2010, died on September 27th 2019 after a short

1 Dec 2019: On this day in 1977 Fred Sanger, Steve Nicklen and Alan Coulson published their landmark paper on the dideoxy sequencing method for DNA. Day 335 of #LMB365 shows a dideoxy sequencing gel of bacteriophage phiX174. Fred was awarded the Nobel Prize for

2 Feb 2019: Day 34 of #LMB365 is just another day in the life of the LMB Estates & Facilities team and raises the question, how easy is it to change light bulbs at 6 metres up in the LMB's atrium? Simple, the LMB Estates & Facilities team will build the scaff

3 Mar 2019: Even the flooring used in the LMB’s atrium has a scientific story to tell about geology and evolutionary biology as it is littered with beautiful fossils. This ammonite for day 63 of #LMB365 was spotted by our Head of Health & safety outside her

3 Sep 2019: Day 246 of #LMB365 is an artistic representation of a synthetic bacterium, by artist Larissa Ulisko. Jason Chin's group computationally designed and synthesised anE. coligenome where all instances of three codons have been replaced by their

29 May 2019: Day 150 of #LMB365 shows the transparent multicellular organism C. elegans, which has fewer than 1,000 cells, and is therefore an ideal model organism for studying various biological processes. Here the entire intestine of two worms is tagged using

17 Jan 2019: Day 17 of #LMB365 is the sculpture 'What Mad Pursuit' by Kindra Crick @K_Crick, the granddaughter of Francis Crick. It depicts the DNA double helix for which the 1962 Nobel Prize @NobelPrize was awarded. It includes blackboard drawings Francis used

7 May 2019: Day 128 of #LMB365 shows Bob Horvitz when he joined the LMB as a postdoctoral visitor in 1974. Bob was born on this day in 1947, in Chicago, USA. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 for the discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of

28 Jul 2019: This shot of the LMB for day 209 of #LMB365 was taken by Oleksiy Kovtun. The stainless steel façade of the plant towers was installed by hand by a company called Varla. The discharge from each of the flues on the towers is the equivalent of a

26 May 2019: Day 147 of #LMB365 shows some aluminium and copper swarf created by the Technical Instrumentation Workshop. Swarf is the technical term for the metal removed during the machining process and is generally small chips or spirals that can be extremely