A chick embryo magnified six times, won the popular vote award (Image: Tomas Pais de Azevedo, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)
The Nikon Small World competition recognises the best microscope images each year, judged on both artistic and scientific merits.
The 2008 winners were unveiled in New York on 15 October and will tour the US. The judging panel were a mixture of scientific journalists and leading researchers from fields including genetics, petrology and optical imaging.
See a slideshow of winning images from the competition
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