Dr Jan Manent wins 2026 ANZSCDB Image Award 

Dr Jan Manent, a research fellow in the McGlinn Group at ARMI, has been awarded the 2026 Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology’s (ANZSCDB) Image Award for a striking three-dimensional visualisation of a mouse embryo’s developing nervous system and skeleton. 

The ANZSCDB Image Award celebrates research images that capture the beauty, complexity and scientific value of cell and developmental biology, recognising work that communicates the wonder of biological discovery as powerfully as it advances it. 

Seeing inside a developing embryo 

To create the award-winning image, Dr Manent combined two complementary techniques: tissue clearing and light sheet microscopy. 

Tissue clearing transforms biological tissue, normally opaque and difficult to see through, into an almost transparent specimen. This clarity allows light to pass through the sample in ways that would otherwise be impossible, opening the door to deep, detailed imaging. 

Light sheet microscopy then does the work of capturing that detail. Rather than illuminating an entire sample at once, it shines an ultra-thin sheet of light through just one layer at a time. As the microscope moves through the specimen, it collects thousands of individual images, layer by layer, which are then digitally reconstructed into a single, complete three-dimensional picture. 

The result is a striking image that reveals two developing systems at once: the nervous system, marked in cyan using the protein Tubb3, and the developing skeleton, marked in yellow using the protein Sox9; both captured simultaneously within an intact mouse embryo. 

The technical detail 

The image was produced using in toto indirect immunofluorescence, followed by iDISCO+ tissue clearing, and imaged on an Ultramicroscope II light sheet microscope (Miltenyi Biotec) fitted with a 4x objective and single-side illumination. The 3D stack was reconstructed and the final image generated in Imaris 10.1 (Bitplane, Oxford Instruments). 

About Dr Manent’s research 

Dr Manent works within the McGlinn Group, where his research focuses on uncovering the novel gene networks that drive growth and identity in the early embryo. Imaging techniques such as those behind this award-winning picture are central to that work, allowing researchers to observe how complex body systems take shape in three dimensions, rather than relying on isolated, two-dimensional snapshots. 

Dr Manent’s award will be formally presented at the 2026 ComBio Conference, to be held in Sydney from 29 September – 1 October 2026.