Additional file 6 of Seventh BMC ecology image competition: the winning images

Additional file 6. Twenty percent of the oxygen we breathe is produced in the ocean by minute algae known as diatoms. Some are solitary, some form chain-like colonies, like these specimens (Thalassiosira), collected near the coasts of the Antarctic peninsula by the schooner of the TARA Oceans project for plankton research. This confocal image, taken at the EMBL light microscopy facility, shows the diatoms’ cell wall (cyan), chloroplasts (red), DNA (blue), membranes and organelles (green). Attribution Luca Santangeli (Arendt Lab, EMBL Heidelberg).