The Smaller the Size, the Thinner the Thread

Yesterday afternoon, I finally received the SEM images of dragline silks from the 1st instar Lyoni babies. After dealing with the PIC who was in charge for the imaging, she finally captured the right angle of the threads. Well, the babies were so tiny, and so were the threads. At first, it was really difficult to get the IOIs, but after some times, she finally cracked it. The thread is really puny in diameter. Guess what, the size goes for NANOMETER scale..This explains why I could not see the threads with naked eyes and needed to use torch light to visualize them. Anyhow, it is finally done..Now, I have a substantial data to back up the transcriptomic analysis that I did last month. Crossing fingers!

 

These are the single thread of dragline thread from the babies taken at 1um and 2 um (300000) magnification.