iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Beneath its dramatic appearance lies a powerful reminder: some of the most promising solutions to pollution may be hidden in the microscopic world.

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By isolating these organisms and studying them in the laboratory, scientists can better understand their capabilities and explore how they might contribute to environmental restoration.

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Captured by Dr. Flavien Maucourt, this colony was isolated from soil polluted with heavy metals and other industrial contaminants. Fungi that thrive in such environments are of particular interest to researchers because they may help transform or remove pollutants from contaminated soils.

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Dark side of the fungi (2020) What looks like an alien landscape is actually a fungus growing in a Petri dish.

Look closely. You may start discovering your own landscapes and characters hidden within the map. 🏆 This image received the Public Award in 2019. #sciart #microbiology #middleearth #tolkien #soilmicrobes #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience #microbialworld #microscopy #sciencecommunication

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In this composition, microbial forms become mountains, coastlines, islands, and shifting territories — a reminder that the unseen world beneath us may be just as complex and interconnected as the fantasy worlds we imagine.

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Inspired by the world created by J. R. R. Tolkien, Dr. Zigmunds Orlovskis (@orlovskis.zigmunds) transformed microscopic images of soil microbes into a living map reminiscent of Tolkien’s fictional continent.

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Soil is home to an enormous hidden diversity of microorganisms, most of which remain unknown to science. These microbes quietly shape ecosystems by recycling nutrients, supporting plant life, storing carbon, and influencing the health of entire environments.

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Microbial map of middle earth (2019) What if Middle Earth existed beneath our feet?

At just 200 × 160 micrometres, this tiny scene represents one of the brain’s most remarkable abilities: the capacity to keep changing and rebuilding itself. 🏆 This image received the Jury Award in 2018. #sciart #neuroscience #stemcells #microscopy #brainresearch #neurogenesis

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Growing neural stem cells in controlled conditions allows researchers to closely observe how new neurons form and to investigate ways of enhancing this process for future therapeutic applications.

Captured by Prof. Nicolas Toni, the work explores how these cells contribute to memory, learning, and resilience to depression.

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In this microscopy image, neurons glow in yellow while adult neural stem cells appear in purple, growing together inside a Petri dish. Unlike most cells in the brain, these stem cells retain the rare ability to produce new neurons throughout life.

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Neurons in a box (2018) Did you know that the adult brain can still produce new neurons?

Nanoscience explores a world invisible to the naked eye, where the smallest changes can have major effects. This image is a reminder that some of the most important breakthroughs happen at the tiniest scales. #sciart #nanoscience #microscopy #electronmicroscopy #biotechnology

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Created by Dr. Maria Bandurist, the work points toward a future where virus particles could be rapidly captured and identified inside the human body, enabling faster and more precise treatment.

This transmission electron microscope image shows a tiny hollow plastic bead covered with even smaller particles called nanoresonators. These nanoparticles are specially engineered to respond to light and their surroundings, making them useful for detecting biological particles such as viruses.

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Captured emptiness (2025) What looks like a distant planet is, in reality, something far smaller.

They may even offer a lesson for research itself: progress often comes from alternating between curiosity and focus. #sciart #datascience #animalbehavior #climatechange #agriculture #research #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

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The research group behind this model studies how animals, soil, vegetation, and atmosphere interact to shape agricultural ecosystems in a changing climate. These movement patterns appear across life, from bacteria and insects to fish, monkeys, and livestock.

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Created by Dr. Alejandro Romero-Ruiz, the work is based on GPS-collar data from cattle grazing in England. Using a model called “Moovement”, he explores how cows balance exploration and exploitation. When to search for new resources, and when to make the most of what they have already found.

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Moovement (2024) What can three cows teach us about adaptation and survival? This image maps the simulated positions of three cows after three days (cyan), five days (red), and thirty days (pink) of grazing in a pasture the size of a football field.

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While polarized microscopy is typically used to study and identify crystalline structures, here the settings were adjusted to emphasize color and form, turning a scientific technique into a striking visual composition.

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To create this image, scientist José Manuel Martínez López (@quimica_tech) placed a small drop of concentrated taurine solution on a heated slide, allowing crystals to form and spread.

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But under polarized light microscopy, they reveal vivid interference colors, created by the way light interacts with their internal structure.

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These are crystals of taurine, an amino acid that plays important roles in the body, from supporting the nervous system and heart function to helping regulate water and salt balance in cells. Under normal light, these crystals are completely colorless.

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Taurine (2022) A burst of color created from something normally invisible.

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Understanding how these cells behave is key to uncovering how kidney function is maintained and how it can be disrupted in disease. #sciart #microscopy #kidney #cellbiology #immunology #biomedicalresearch #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

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At the center, the bright orange bundle is a glomerulus, one of the kidney’s many filtration units responsible for cleaning the blood. Captured by bioloigist Esperanza Hughes Salinas, the image is part of research exploring the role of immune cells within the kidney.

The vivid colors reveal different components of the tissue: blue marks the nuclei of cells, orange highlights a structural protein that helps cells maintain their shape, green labels nerve-related proteins, and yellow shows immune cells.

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Glomerular ore (2021) At first glance, this looks like a fragment of rock or a metal ore. In reality, it’s a high-magnification image of a human kidney.

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At that moment, Rosaria was listening to Life on Mars? by David Bowie, an unexpectedly perfect match for a scene that felt more like a distant planet than a dish of living cells. #sciart #stemcells #neuroscience #microscopy #cellbiology #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

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Captured by Dr. Rosaria Di Martino using an iPhone 8 through the microscope eyepiece (10× magnification), the image highlights the dynamic nature of cell cultures, especially during differentiation, when cells dramatically change both shape and function.

This reprogramming enables them to become many different cell types. Here, they are transforming into nerve cells, extending long projections called axons that begin to form connections.

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In reality, this is a bright-field microscopy image of human induced pluripotent stem cells differentiating into neurons. These cells began as ordinary adult cells that scientists “reset” back into a stem-like state by introducing a specific set of genes.

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Is there life on Mars? (2020) At first glance, this looks like the surface of a distant planet.

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Captured by Dr. Sebastian Augustin, the image highlights how even a process as functional as shedding can be breathtakingly beautiful. 🏆 This image received the Public Award in 2019. #sciart #plantbiology #microscopy #cellbiology #plantscience #arabidopsis #scienceisbeautiful #artinscience

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Studying this process reveals how plants control growth, respond to stress, and manage resources, a deeper understanding that could help improve crop resilience and productivity.

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What looks like a cluster of glowing bubbles is actually a close-up of an abscission zone, the region where plants shed leaves, flowers, or damaged parts. The blue “bubbles” are plant cells, while the red outlines trace a lipid layer that marks the boundaries between them.

Bubbles (2019) Plants know when to let go.

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This image offers an artistic glimpse into the delicate balance between plants and the microscopic life that surrounds them, reminding us that even a single leaf is a living ecosystem. #sciart #plantmicrobiology #microbiology #plantscience #microbialworld #leafmicrobiome #scienceisbeautiful

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To create this image, Dr. Zigmunds Orlovskis placed a leaf of european beech on bacterial growth media and incubated it for 48 hours at 25 °C. As the microbes began to grow, a small fraction of the hidden community living on and within the leaf became visible.

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Leaves are home to a remarkable diversity of microbes. Far from passive passengers, many of these microscopic partners help shape how plants grow, defend themselves from disease, and interact with insects and other organisms.

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