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23 Aug 2019: On day 235 of #LMB365 PhD student Ross Hill celebrates with fellow students and postdocs the publication of his first paper from his PhD. The culmination of 3½ years of work and the ultimate accolade: to see your work reaching the scientific

22 Dec 2019: As we celebrate the winter solstice, day 356 of #LMB365 shows John O’Neill’s group on an outing to visit the Corpus Clock in Cambridge. Sitting atop the clock is an extraordinary monster: the ‘Chronophage’ meaning Eater of Time. John’s

25 Sep 2019: This image for day 268 of #LMB365 shows the brain and some imaginal discs isolated from a Drosophila larva. Imaginal discs are sacks of cells that will develop into adult structures such as wings, legs and eyes during metamorphosis. The tissue was

6 Jan 2019: Day 6 of #LMB365 is provided by @as_bates and @gsxej who are working on circuits in the brain of the fruit fly D. Melanogaster. The image shows over a thousand neurons from the fly's ‘instinct centre’, which is similar to the human amygdala, and

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

2 Nov 2019: Ice contamination is the last thing you want to see on your cryo-EM grid, as charging of the ice under the electron beam is a common source of image drift at high magnification. However, sometimes while screening your sample it is nice to come

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

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

24 Sep 2019: LMB scientists will be taking C. elegans worms to Queensgate shopping centre in Peterborough on Saturday 28th September to tell members of the public about how we use worms to study how neurons work and improve our understanding of ageing and disease

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

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

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

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

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

31 Dec 2019: As 2019 draws to a close and we get to day 365 of #LMB365 the whole LMB wants to say thank you for following this project. We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the images as much as we’ve enjoyed pulling them together and that you’ve discovered

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

9 Apr 2019: Neurons (brain cells) communicate by passing electrical signals to each other across connections called synapses. By simulating the activity of individual synapses on a neuron, seen as deflections in this image for day 100 of #LMB365, Jake Watson in

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

9 Nov 2019: The image for day 313 of #LMB365 shows apical localisation of thehmRNA (magenta) in the fruit fly embryo. This mRNA is trafficked by the microtubule motor dynein and Simon Bullock’s group in Cell Biology has used this system to shed light on how

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

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 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

19 Dec 2019: Day 353 of #LMB365 shows the LMB Library sprouts in quiet discussion about their Christmas preparations and wish lists. Sprout one is hoping Santa is going to bring them a copy of the Nordic Baking Book. Sprout two would really like some fancy

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

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

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

6 Dec 2019: Simon Bullock’s lab uses a combination of in vitro and in vivo methods to investigate how microtubule-based cargo transport is orchestrated in cells. On day 340 of #LMB365 Simon illustrates this approach by overlaying a crystal structure from a

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

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

26 Apr 2019: Most steps of X-ray crystallography are enabled with safe and straightforward automated protocols. This is particularly true for screening protein crystallisation conditions. On day 117 of #LMB365 a young visitor (Julia, aged 6) was desperate to try

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

5 Jul 2019: The Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, NYU Medical Center, New York, USA,.

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

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

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

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

4 Jul 2019: On day 185 of #LMB365, the early morning sunshine casts a reflection of a 1950s ball and spoke model of the alpha-helix peptide chain onto the wall of the library mezzanine. Linus Pauling, of Caltech, beat the MRC Unit in solving this structure and

22 Apr 2019: The external mounds around the LMB were originally planted with 20 different wild flora species to produce a grassland meadow mixture. The original planting mixture has now been taken over by species from the surrounding area and the variety of

9 Dec 2019: The technique of Hydrogen Deuterium exchange/Mass Spectrometry can be used to highlight regions of a protein's structure that change upon binding to another protein or ligand. Day 343 of #LMB365 shows a butterfly plot or chart, showing the

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

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

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

22 Jun 2019: Day 173 of #LMB365 is a light microscopy image from Wanda Kukulski in Cell Biology of yeast cells producing a fluorescent version of a protein that assembles into patches on the cell membrane. Each patch contains hundreds of copies of the protein.

12 Jan 2019: When DNA is damaged this can cause mutation, which drives cancer. Luckily our cells have repair mechanisms that can fix damage to protect the cell. Day 12 of #LMB365 shows towers of plates containing cells being used by KJ Patel's group in PNAC to

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

10 Jun 2019: Happy Hour is one of the LMB’s regular social events where people can meet, chat, have a couple of drinks, discuss their work or organise their weekend’s activities. Happy Hour has been going for around 10 years and this photo for day 162 of

3 Aug 2019: Day 215 of #LMB365 is an image of an embryonic day 12 mouse lung, showing the beginning of the extensive branching morphogenesis that will eventually form the adult mouse lung. The tubes of the forming lung are shown in green, and the surrounding