The triceratops

A team of undergraduate students worked throughout the summer looking for the expression of a particular gene of interest, Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule like-1 (DSCAML1), in the brains of both wild type and loss-of-function mice. Dubbed "The Brain Team", the students cut and stained over ten brains, mounting each 100 micrometer brain slice on microscope slides before taking pictures of each slide under the Zeiss microscope in the IBEST imaging core. This composite image depicts a cortical slice of one of the mutant brains that was damaged during mounting. The blue color is from X-gal staining that targeted areas of high DSCAML1 expression in the brain. It was during the montage phase, where multiple images of the same slice were overlaid to create one continuous image, that the Brain Team took particular interest to this slice's uncanny resemblance to a Triceratops.