We are planning the build of a light sheet setup and are considering a Powell lens to generate the sheet. I've not been able to find a discussion of the pros and cons in literature, so if you ever used a Powell lens or have considered using one in your setup, I would love to hear your opinion. THX!

We've now discovered some neat cell culture dishes that feature a 50 micron thick film of a proprietary polymer with refractive index even closer to water than FEP. They work just as well as our homemade FEP assembly and are available in multiwell plate format too! www.sarstedt.com/en/products/...

Internet people, please help me to decide on the logo for #bigvolumebrowser, a multi-volume 3D viewer plugin for Fiji I'm working on. Please vote by replying with a number or liking one that was already mentioned. My favorites are 6, 7, 8 and 10 so far.

PhD opportunity at Utrecht University in the lab of @tingfenglin.bsky.social ! www.uu.nl/en/organisat... If you are interested in neuroscience and building a microscope: don't hesitate to apply! Please forward this to people who might be interested.

Hi #Neuroscience, Exciting news—I’m recruiting a PhD student to join my lab and study neuroscience in larval zebrafish 🧠🐟 Microscopy expertise is a big plus! Link: drive.google.com/file/d/1Wb4h...

New release of #BigTrace plugin is out. Together with @aafkegros.bsky.social from Simone Köhler group we added a fully automatic tracing mode. + more macro functions and bug fixes github.com/ekatrukha/Bi...

A cell finding its way through the matrix, imaged with @joycemeiri.bsky.social on LLS.

🚨Publication alert🚨 My first, first-author paper is now out in @natphoton.nature.com! Our paper describes an iterative spectral unmixing algorithm and eight-channel camera-based hardware we developed enabling unmixing of low SNR live-cell data at video rates. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We present a simple method to easily increase the imageable depth of an expansion microscopy gel on a typical inverted microscope ten-fold, using some carefully placed FEP film and a water dipping objective lens:

Wow, this paper provides crucial understanding of local translation and processing of transmembrane proteins in axons, one of the big mysteries that have haunted the field for a long time!!!!!!!! Fantastic!!!!!!!! Nguyen et al., 2025, bioRxiv 2025.09.09.674816ff. -- doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Maximising imaging volumes of expanded tissues for inverted fluorescence microscopy https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.12.675899v1

Our new preprint is about the airway epithelium microtubule network, cilia, basal body protein composition, averaging of volumetric fluorescence data, and expansion microscopy. Four years of very hard work from our very talented Emma van Grinsven. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/N)

Some first raw (not deskewed) data of live human induced pluripotent stem cells from #Snouty now ready for some serious live imaging. Light sheet moving at a 38-degree angle through the cell layer; coverslip is on the bottom.

I rarely see the "depth of field effect" for 3D microscopy datasets rendering. Tried to implement it as a weekend project. Curious, if it can be useful #bigvolumebrowser

How many photons are in a GFP? — more than last year, and more than you thought. Here's a simple, cheap, and practical method to break a fundamental limit in fluorescence microscopy. But it only works in light sheet!

Pan-ASLM system for large scale expansion microscopy from the Bewersdorf lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

All the opto-vimentin plasmids are now available on Addgene: www.addgene.org/Anna_Akhmano...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Excellent Jasper van den Ende in Esther's lab @esthernoltethoen.bsky.social. Using Marvin's @marvintanenbaum.bsky.social SUNtag system to monitor EV cargo access to cytoplasm allows real time quantification of the process. #EV #extracellular vesicles

Hi #neuroscience! I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be launching my own group as an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University in the beautiful Netherlands, where we’ll study neural plasticity and development in the #cerebellum using #zebrafish. I’m looking for a PhD student — get in touch!

Optogenetic and chemical genetic tools for rapid repositioning of #vimentin intermediate filaments. New tools developed by Milena Pasolli, Joyce Meiring @joycemeiri.bsky.social, Anna Akhmanova and colleagues @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social: rupress.org/jcb/article/... @gijsjekoenderink.bsky.social

Production has started for a new #Snoutscope objective, AMS-AGY v3. It has significantly larger FOV and some other tweaks from v1 and v2. Currently accepting pre-orders. The price will need to increase modestly after deliveries start late October.

Excited to share that our fast & reversible chemical and optogenetic vimentin pulling tools are now published in JCB! 🥳 We show a subset of organelles are displaced with vimentin pulling to the cell centre and cells become much softer despite little or no effect on actin/MTs doi.org/10.1083/jcb....

it was already fun to look around the documentation for cmap (cmap-docs.readthedocs.io) but @grosoane.bsky.social just added a very cool feature to toggle between color vision deficiencies. Watch your perceptually uniform color maps gain some kinks 😂 as a mild deutan myself, I appreciate it! 🙏

This is a very useful trick!

Hey optical tech dev folks: how do you do alignment? Can you outline your alignment procedures for positioning optics and verifying their correct positioning?

Inkscape plugin to rescale figures without distorting the text, and other useful features! github.com/burghoff/Sci...

That is it for today. Here is the last movie of 🧸 looking at microtubules obtained using expansion microscopy. The current mess of a code is available here github.com/UU-cellbiolo... (N/N)

Today I will be working on the import of glTF format to #bigdatabrowser. It is a common format to store 3D scenes and object (meshes), so it would be nice to have it. As a datasource, real life and 3D model, I will be using this guy. Let's see how far I can go (1/N)

Some early attempts to show 3D SMLM data in #bigvolumebrowser : 4M points from @shuangfu-shawn.bsky.social re-analysis of our LLS-paint data (see recent retweet). It can be overlaid with any volumetric data input. @christlet.bsky.social are you still interested in Fiji SMLM renderer?

Northwestern just announced that the university will meet the funding needs of any research that is being impacted by stop orders. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO! #edusky #academicsky wgntv.com/evanston/nor...

Where can I find a good overview of the current open-source and/or commercial light sheet microscope systems available?

Bioimaging and bioimage analysis friends, some help if you have 2-3 mins; for a paper, we're trying to estimate the number of biologists trained in open source software or tools in the last ~5 years. (1/2) #bioimaging #microscopy #bioimageanalysis

Daan & Radim extended our q4STEM method to lamella fabrication from frozen-hydrated cells, implemented RLM thin-film interference (inspired by @mgflast.bsky.social) on a 3-beam coincident system, and show how live thickness monitoring allows automated milling of high-quality lamella: edu.nl/f9fn3

Thickness- and quality-controlled fabrication of fluorescence-targeted frozen-hydrated lamellae: Cell Reports Methods www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Spotted this (chocolate) microscope at the chocolate festival in Obidos, Portugal. Does anyone recognize the brand/model?

For a paper's image analysis methods section, I like to assemble extra movies explaining the idea behind it. I think it complements the text explanation or the code itself. For a selected few that gonna reach it :) The only problem is that it takes a lot of effort and time.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... POTATOMap is officially out today! (Even tho it says 2024Dec30… yeah long story😂) Thank you to all the authors and everyone involved! I hope we have provided something useful and maybe leave a little (just a little) impact in your research.

We are delighted to welcome three new correspondents to the FocalPlane team. Look out for blog posts from Sally Horton @crick.ac.uk, Varsha Mahapatra, Utrecht University and @nclnoel.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk in 2025. Check out our introductory post ⤵️: focalplane.biologists.com/2025/02/24/a...

And they re-analyzed raw data of deep tissue imaging of axonal rings (with AO), from Marijn Siemons work (in our lab). The good consequences of sharing the data

My German election ballot only arrived today, a long shot but is anyone traveling from Boston to Berlin today who could take it? Any leads @germanyinboston.bsky.social ?

My main PhD paper is on bioRxiv! 🥳 We used motor-PAINT, expansion microscopy, and live-cell imaging of StableMARK to map out how the microtubule cytoskeleton reorganizes during neuronal development. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Come join us in Utrecht for some cutting edge #microscopy and 3D cell biology!! #3Dcellbio

Made an interactive "on-the-fly" deskew of lattice lightsheet data in #BigVolumeViewer for teaching purposes

New: Iyer, Akhmanova et al reveal that two centriolar proteins, CP110 & CPAP, show antagonistic activities at #microtubule + ends. Together, they impart very slow but processive microtubule polymerization & their interaction promotes robust #centriole formation https://buff.ly/3WuSIaL

Very excited that the lab's first paper is out! We showed that in stem cells, Aurora B controls abscission dynamics by regulating microtubules stability and MCAK recruitment. Very happy with this streamlined version of our 2024 preprint. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

I have the first version and I recently made a Legowenhoek... Will publish it maybe... It uses only LEGO parts including the lens...

The insanity of being a fire ecologist in the epicenter of a major fire event, bags packed and ready to evacuate, watching active fire from my window, while taking media requests and explaining to the public, for the 100,000th time how climate change is largely responsible for this

Mitochondria consist of networks of cylindrical tubes, right? Not necessarily! - in our new preprint, @gavsturm.bsky.social investigates how mitochondria transiently adopt a beads-on-a-string morphology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Advances in microscopy mean we can now do more than just observe biology—we can control it. But how far can we really push this in mammalian cells with all their (beautiful but annoying) heterogeneity? 🧪🔬(🧵)