"From a snake embryo with love" by Grigorii Timin, University of Geneva by SNSF Scientific Image Competition Via Flickr: Entry in category 1. Object of study; Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Grigorii Timin Development is generally described phenomenologically by the corresponding dynamics of gene expression and the observed morphological changes. Another approach, combining biological and physical processes, consists in the quantitative assessment of the time evolution of 3D spatial distributions of cell differentiation, proliferation, migration and signalling as well as the mechanical properties of the corresponding tissues. Implementation of these parameters in numerical simulations allows identifying their relative importance in the morphogenetic process. My PhD research, under the supervision of Pr. Michel Milinkovitch at the University of Geneva, includes such a multidisciplinary analysis applied to the development of skin scales in snakes. The image is a single focal plane from a 3D confocal scan of a cleared whole-mount African house snake embryonic skin sample stained for proliferating cells (red), beta-catenin (magenta), nuclear envelope lamin (cyan) and nuclei (green).