Energy Worms--2022 Open Voting Winner. In Art of Science

Caption: Watch an energy regulator on mitochondria, cellular powerhouses that go wherever energy is needed Mitochondria are the part of cells responsible for producing energy using the sugars we get from food and the oxygen we breathe. This energy we have readily available at any point is monitored by a protein called AMPK. If we don't have a lot of energy available, AMPK tells other parts of the cell to focus less on building and more on breaking things down to create more energy. In this image, a fluorescent sensor that can detect when AMPK is "talking" or "quiet" was attached to the mitochondria. With certain lower energy conditions, AMPK talks louder and we see even greater brightness from the sensor in our images. Understanding this conversation AMPK starts is important in studying energy-related diseases like diabetes and cancer.