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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Four cancer cells displaying continuous membrane blebbing videoed through a DIC microscope. No, these cells are not dying. #CellBiology

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Reposted by Dylan Burnette

Vanderbilt Cell Imaging Shared Resource (CISR) @vucellimaging.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Happy #FluorescenceFriday! Huge congratulations 👏👏👏 to Vanderbilt researchers with Honorable Mentions in the 2026 Nikon Small World in Motion - Dylan Burnette, Emma Koory, and Zach Lehmann! @healthcare.nikon.com www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20... @mag2art.bsky.social @zlehmann.bsky.social 🔬🎥🎨

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A cell dividing into two new daughter cells photographed through a microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Pictures of two insects acquired with microscopes hundreds of years apart. One was hand drawn and one was photographed using a digital camera. Can you tell which one is which?

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

A cell photographed through a microscope. DNA in the nucleus (purples), the Golgi apparatus (greens), and the actin filament cytoskeleton (oranges) are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The mouth of a sand dollar photographed through a microscope. Not a mouth you say? OK. Peristomial aperture if you want to be fancy about it. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

DNA in the nuclei of cancer cells videoed through a spinning disk confocal microscope. The first cell going through cell division got the assignment: one nucleus becomes two nuclei. The second cell, not so much. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

A single cell photographed through a microscope. DNA in the nucleus (cyan), mitochondria (yellow), and actin filaments (magenta) are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

The powerhouses/overlords of the cell, mitochondria, photographed through a microscope. It’s just one cell. Well, just part of one cell—the perinuclear region. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Preach! This is an important point. I was talking about showing images, not quantification. Since it can be hard to judge the quality of image data from graphs alone, scientists still need to show a “representative example” (the ridiculously ways that image gets chosen can be left for another day).

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Three cells photographed through a microscope. DNA in the nucleus (blue), mitochondria (green), and actin filaments (red) are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

A neuronal growth cone extending from a neuron taken from a sea slug (yes a sea slug is exactly what it sounds like) photographed through a microscope. Actin filaments and microtubules are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Neurons in a developing zebrafish embryo videoed through a microscope. If you look closely at the bottom, you can see neuronal growth cones racing along pre-existing axon tracks. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Cells in a zebrafish embryo videoed through a microscope. There are neurons, immune cells, and muscle cells among others. Two cells die. Can you find them? Video length: 6.5 hours. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

My 1st Nikon Small World Reject of 2026 :-) A heart muscle cell photographed through a microscope. Alpha actinin 2 and beta myosin II are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Blood cells flowing next to a developing spinal cord in a zebrafish embryo videoed through a microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

A neuronal growth cone photographed through a microscope. Microtubules and actin filaments are shown. Technique: DIC and widefield fluorescence microscopy. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

A cell videoed through a DIC microscope. The nucleus spins around. Why would it do that? #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

A large extracellular vesicle or a happy little demon? Can't a blebbisome be both? Spinning disk confocal microscopy. 15x15 micron field of view. #CellBiology #LargeEV

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Two cells videoed through a microscope. One has big membrane blebs (right) and one has little membrane blebs (left). What do they have in common. They will be dead soon...... #CellBiology #Apoptosis

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

A large extracellular vesicle, called a "blebbisome," videoed through a microscope. Want to make your blebbisomes extra blebby like this one? Stress them out. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Membrane blebs form surprisingly fast. This spinning-disk confocal movie of a particularly "blebby" cell was captured over just 35 seconds in real time. Shown here is a single optical (Z) slice. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Breast cancer cells videoed through a microscope for 4 minutes. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Mitochondria in a crawling fibroblast cell videoed through a spinning disk confocal microscope by Burnette Lab member, Atsuko Price. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Nuclei in cancer cells photographed through a microscope. DNA is shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Nuclei in cancer cells photographed through a microscope. DNA is shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Mitochondria in a living cell, imaged today while I was training new lab members on our spinning-disk confocal microscope. Shown are the full cell and zoomed-in regions of interest. Total imaging time: 60 minutes. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Mitochondria in two cells videoed through a spinning disk confocal microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

A control cell going through cell division with normal membrane blebs (top) and a cell we messed with (bottom). Both were videoed through a DIC microscope. #CellBiology www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10....

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Not all cells do the whole membrane blebbing thing the same. Some of them get weird about it. This is a single cell videoed through a DIC microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Actin filament-based structures in a cell photographed using structured illumination microscopy. The video starts with the bottom of the cell and steps up through the Z dimension (i.e., going up from the substrate). #CellBiology rupress.org/jcb/article/...

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Microtubules (green) fighting retrograde actin flow (magenta) in a neuronal growth cone videoed through a TIRF microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

The newest episode of Nikon's Small World Speaks. "Dylan Burnette (that's me) shares some of the stories behind one of his favorite images he's submitted to the Nikon Small World competition to date." #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

This was my first journal cover from back in the day. It shows the side of a neuronal growth cone photographed with an electron microscope. The microtubules (green) were labeled with nanoscale particles of colloidal gold bound to antibodies (i.e., immunogold). #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

A dividing cell videoed through a microscope. Hot tip: Don't mess around with myosin II paralogs if you don't want your cells to freak out. #CellBiology www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

The inside of a heart muscle cell photographed with an electron microscope. The powerhouses/overlords of the cell, mitochondria, are shown in pink. The repeating structures are the basic units of contraction that drive each heart beat (i.e., sarcomeres). #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

The heart of a zebrafish embryo photographed through a microscope. (Ventricle: Left; Atrium: Right). The nuclei of both the heart cells and blood cells are shown. "What? Red blood cells do not have nuclei!", you say. So human centric of you...... #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Immature heart muscle cells photographed through a microscope. Nuclei (yellow/green) and the molecular motor driving muscle contraction, myosin II (purple/blue), are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Neuronal growth cones at the end of neurites (immature neural extensions that have yet to turn into axons or dendrites) videoed through a microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Cells photographed through a microscope. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Cover image for "The microtubule GTP-tubulin cap size is modulated during cell division" by Anna Cassidy! I know it says "May 1, 2026", but it is already online so here it is! www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/...

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

The Burnette lab did well last year in the Nikon Small World microscopy contest indeed! All three of our entries made it to the top 20!

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

A cell videoed through a microscope. DNA in the nucleus (cyan), mitochondria (yellow), and the actin filament cytoskeleton (magenta) are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

A cell going through cell division to create two daughter cells videoed through a spinning disk confocal microscope. DNA (red), Golgi apparatus (green), actin filaments (blue) are shown. #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

A cancer cell videoed through a microscope. It has 3 nuclei (magenta). The powerhouse/overlords of the cell, mitochondria, are also shown (green). #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Are there still Zoom-based scientific seminar series? As I plan for a promotion cycle that expects ~10 invited talks/year. I love giving talks and talking with interesting scientists, just not the travel part. I study the growth and function of the heart and large extracellular vesicles.

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Two cells isolated from a fish scale videoed through a DIC microscope. The cells are cool but now all I see are extracellular vesicles floating by in the media and stuck to the substrate....... #CellBiology

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Dylan Burnette @mag2art.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

They renamed blebbisomes. The authors claimed erroneously in their paper that blebbisomes are found only in cancer cells, whereas we clearly demonstrated that blebbisomes are produced by normal cells. The structures described here are simply blebbisomes generated by astrocytes.

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