Fridays = preprints and #FluorescenceFriday. I'm looking forward to brightening up a cold, rainy day!

🔬🔦Imaging spotlight: Lock-in-SIM Our latest imaging spotlight focusses on structured illumination microscopy, as Wenjie Liu & team present Lock-in-SIM. Check out their post to discover how & why you should try it with your SIM workflow: focalplane.biologists.com/2026/01/08/i...

Wow, what a fantastic line up of instructors! Don't miss this opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business ❤️🔬

The 2023 version of this meeting was fantastic and the 2026 programme promises to be just as brilliant! (I may also be thinking of chatting all thing microscopy in the Spanish sunshine while huddled inside in a cold and snowy Cambridge.) Sign up by Friday 16 Jan for the early-bird discount ⤵️

🔬 🖥️ Applications are open for the CSHL course Quantitative Imaging: From Acquisition to Analysis (April 6–21, 2026)! An intensive, hands-on course covering advanced fluorescence microscopy and quantitative image analysis using open-source tools. 🗓️ Apply online by Jan 30, 2026

Amazing research and such a fantastic scicomm video. I'd like to show it to my kids, but I'm afraid that it'll backfire and they'll use it to explain why all the clothes in their cupboards are unfolded despite the fact they were folded when they went in....

Thanks for catching that background slide, Chris! And thanks for the shout to @the-node.bsky.social, @prelights.bsky.social & @focalplane.bsky.social, Jez. I'm sad to miss the UK membrane trafficking meeting this year, but hope to see you both at @jcellsci.bsky.social imaging meeting next year!

Love this story from @andreamurillo.bsky.social. It was fun to think back to when @em-stp.bsky.social & @jemimaburden.bsky.social taught me EM and I got to play with gold*, sapphire^ and diamond**! I was so excited to get our paper published in JCS, & now I have the pleasure to be part of the team.

Now that's image stitching! My fun discovery this Friday is this montage of 33 electron micrographs in published in @jcellsci.bsky.social in the 1960s. The original measured 3ft square!

Probably the coolest thing I learned at #ABRF was that there is a website called "core in a box" all about starting a core and management. Check it out! www.hopkinsmedicine.org/research/res...

#MicroscopyMonday! Join @bioimagingna.bsky.social for a conversation with @clairebrown514.bsky.social as part of our Career Speaker series! Learn More & Register here buff.ly/9nB1qnC

At the end of last year, I was lucky enough to chat with both Jennifer and Manu. Check out these interviews in @jcellsci.bsky.social to find out more about these extraordinary scientists!

We're turning 15 this year🥳The past and present Community Managers got together to chat about what it's like working at the Node, and what they've been doing since: @easternblot.bsky.social @catcvicente.bsky.social @aidanmaartens.bsky.social @helenzsci.bsky.social @joyceyu.bsky.social #biologists100

I always get a little nervous when attending conferences and knowing what to expect helps. We give a few insights into what to expect at #biologists100 & do reach out if you have any qs about the meeting. Also, there's a possibility that I once went to the wrong door at the ACC, so we explain all!!

It's almost impossible to choose! We're excited to get the images back from the printers, along with something for another little project that our community sites are working on with our conference reporters 😉 for #biologists100.

@the-node.bsky.social #biologists100 reporter @jens-cells.bsky.social is putting together a conference survival guide. What are your top tips for getting the most out of your conference experience.

Good choice! But if we are allowed to play favourites, I thought this one from Malina Iwanski, Lukas Kapitein and team was pretty cool. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

As part of @biologists.bsky.social 100-year anniversary, it has been fun to look at the older journal content. For this post, I went all the way back to 1853 to look at early efforts at segmentation, wise words on peer review and the benefits of sharing tips and tricks rather than whole stories.

There's still time to enter our image competition for your chance to win £250! All the shortlisted images will be displayed in our gallery at the Biologists @ 100 conference in Liverpool. Deadline: 24 February 2025 #Biologists100 focalplane.biologists.com/2025/02/05/t...

#FocalPlaneCorrespondent Greg Redpath shares the first post in his biosensor series. Greg discusses the key considerations in selecting & using signalling biosensors and highlights GFP, the original biosensor. focalplane.biologists.com/2025/01/16/h...

Read about the experiences of our 2024 correspondents, Daniel Doucet, @sdutta.bsky.social and Greg Redpath, in our end of year post: focalplane.biologists.com/2024/12/19/o...

We are looking for our next cohort of #FocalPlaneCorrespondents! If you are interested in getting some #scicomm experience alongside your research, check out our call and drop us an email if you have any questions. Deadline for applications: 20 January 2025

Our first preprint list for 2025 is focussed on research using microscopy tools to answer questions in biology. As always, please let us know if there are other preprints that you’d like to see on our list. focalplane.biologists.com/2025/01/10/m...

As 2024 comes to a close we caught up with our fabulous #FocalPlaneCorrespondents Daniel Doucet, @sdutta.bsky.social and Greg Redpath. In our interviews we chat about their research, their FocalPlane posts and their experiences as correspondents. focalplane.biologists.com/2024/12/19/o...

I'm so full of ginger cookies from the office Christmas pot luck lunch that it is hard to think. Apologies if anyone receives any nonsensical emails from me this afternoon! #ThreeBiscuitRule

And don't forget to tell all your friends that aren't on social media!

#FocalPlaneCorrespondent Daniel Doucet interviews Kedar Narayan, the 2025 recipient of the Alan Agar @royalmicrosoc.bsky.social Award for Electron Microscopy. We learn about #volumeEM, big data challenges and the vEM community. focalplane.biologists.com/2024/12/14/v...

This is such a fantastic post, both for those getting started in imaging or if you need an update on the amazing developments in fluorescent probe research. Thanks Lina! Also, look out for our short interview with Lina, which will be up on @focalplane.bsky.social soon.

This week's @focalplane.bsky.social preprint list will focus on new tools and techniques in microscopy, covering sample prep, probes, microscopy hardware and software. I'm just finalising the list now, so let me know if you have any recommendations from the last ~6 weeks!

Following workshops at @harvardmed.bsky.social and #I2K2024, Ranit Karmakar shares an intro (plus access to course material) into how to use Segment Anything Model (SAM) to segment your microscopy images. Check it our here: focalplane.biologists.com/2024/12/10/s...

Hey SkyWalkers, we've recently acquired a STED microscope and I was wondering what's your favorite structure to test/demo STED imaging (except for tubulin/actin)? Bonus points when: -can be done in HeLa cells -it's based on a genetically encoded part that is available from @addgene.bsky.social

Excited for #CellBio2024 (how is it only a few days away? 😱)! Looking forward to seeing old friends/colleagues and meeting new ones (…and hopefully seeing some ☀️). If you’d like to chat more about publishing in @jcellsci.bsky.social, drop me a message or find me at the @biologists.bsky.social stand!

Check out this feature on @harikrushnan.bsky.social, one of our previous Advanced Microscopy Fellows (www.aicjanelia.org/fellowship) 👇

TOMORROW, Dec 10 at 12 pm CT, the Scientific Speaker Series will feature a panel on "Neurodiversity assets, challenges, and paths to inclusion in microscopy careers"! Register to join us: www.bioimagingnorthamerica.org/events/bina-... @marianadeniz.bsky.social

🧪♻️🔬The first of six in our blog series on how to make labs more sustainable is out. Jeroen Dobbelaere offers an overall picture of academia’s environmental impact. Read more: https://bit.ly/4irS2Mn #sustainability #ClimateChange #SciSky #SustainableLabs

***Help needed*** I’m making a list of ongoing webinar series in #cellbio, please help me find others that I’m missing! So far, I have: - Membrane trafficking - Intermediate filaments - Mito Talks/Chats - Motors in quarantine - Fragile nucleosome - Mito911 Webinar Series

I was going to call it as pasodoble, but then I checked the time stamp! Very cool movie though.

Meet the Hirashima Lab @hirashima0203.bsky.social at @mbisg.bsky.social and Department of Physiology, National University of Singapore. The lab studies the emergence of collective cell behavior and its connection to biological functions in #DevBio and reproduction. Read the 'Lab meeting' post:

Amazing course for someone who really wants to dive into the fascinating world of quantitative light imaging 🤩

I'm just finalising the preprints list for FocalPlane. This week it's on #bioimageanalysis, let me know if you have any recommendations from the last ~6 weeks. You can the archive here: focalplane.biologists.com/tag/preprints/

Blue skies for Bluesky! It's been blue skies over the @biologists.bsky.social office today. It feels like it has been a while since we've seen the sun!

Do you want to learn light microscopy? The registration for the Pasteur course 'Principles and Applications of Fluorescence Microscopy' in March 2025 are open!! pasteur.fr/en/pafm 10 March – 21 March 2025 plz RT! #PAFM is back after a two-year break 🤩🌈🔬🪛 👇thread

It’s been a busy year for @focalplane.bsky.social. In our recent editorial, @helenzsci.bsky.social and I outline some of the new partnerships and upgrades that, we hope, make the site even more useful for the #microscopy and #cellbiology communities. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

This was a really fun interview to do. Hopefully the obvious passion that Florian has for his work comes through in the interview. I was also happy to learn some new tactics/approaches to arranging a time for the interview!

Is this place good for conversation? #Science #academics, #STEM ppl - how much free teaching work do you do? I get A LOT of requests for data viz talks. Mostly mutually beneficial, for the greater good. But there are also those just filling seminar slots, PIs are no show, no PR/thank you..

I've had a sneak peek at the programme and I'm so excited for this Workshop. It'll also be my first time in Latin America!

Exciting day on Bluesky for @biologists.bsky.social, although somehow setting up the @jcellsci.bsky.social and @focalplane.bsky.social accounts felt quite exhausting. Glad that I now get to go for drinks with the hugging group from St Johnston lab past and present!

This is one of my all-time favourite meetings. As well as the fantastic science, it was also fun to see how many bottles of wine mysteriously disappeared after the bus back to Bristol departed!

I'm really looking forward to Biologists @ 100 (might even need to splash out on some new smart trainers!) We're looking for a reporter to help report on the meeting for FocalPlane, drop me a message if you'd like more details/have any questions. focalplane.biologists.com/2024/10/03/a...

Brave & important. A #mentalhealth podcast special. Hear first hand experiences from two hugely successful scientists, Beth Cimini & Kedar Narayan. Whilst a serious issue, it is very much a relaxed, engaging chat. See/Hear: bit.ly/microscopist... @globias.bsky.social @eurobioimaging.bsky.social