FocalPlane - Where biology meets microscopy

Our pick of the week

Welcome to FocalPlane! The new microscopy community site hosted by Journal of Cell Science at The Company of Biologists. We have created this space for you – microscopists, biologists, developers – to share information, connect, interact or just browse the content. We have added some launch posts, images and events hoping to inspire you to reach out and share your own content. Feel free to navigate through the website and get in touch with any questions or suggestions. For launch week we are featuring a image from Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (of our Scientific Advisory Board), which we will be updating every week, so if you would like to see your image featured, please get in touch! We hope you enjoy the site and look forward to hearing from you.

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Recent posts

Microscope technology development and the search for a free lunch

Posted by Alfred Millett-Sikking, on 10 July 2020

I fortuitously stumbled into the field of microscopy around 2013, just in time to enjoy the hype of the 2014 Chemistry Nobel Prize for super-resolved fluorescence imaging. As a newcomer, I was quite surprised that this nearly 400-year-old field could still catch the attention of Stockholm. After all, wasn’t a microscope just some lenses to

My history with GFP (and other members of the family)

Posted by Joachim Goedhart, on 7 July 2020

I first crossed paths with green fluorescent protein (GFP) while doing an internship in 1996 at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen. I was chemically labeling epidermal growth factor (EGF) with the fluorescent dyes Cy3 and Cy5 to study growth-factor signaling. Two post-docs were discussing the use of GFP as an alternative fluorescent tag and

Fixation artifacts and how to minimize them

Posted by Heather Brown-Harding, on 7 July 2020

Sample preparation is the first step for having high-quality images that will impress everyone, but it is often overlooked. Many times I have tried to help others improve their microscope images, only to find out that improvement was not possible due to the quality of the sample. No matter how expensive your microscope is, you

Open microscopy across our journals

Posted by FocalPlane, on 3 July 2020

21-27 October marked International Open Access Week 2019. During this week many events were organised, stimulating discussion on open knowledge and connecting like-minded people and organisations that are all working towards greater accessibility of research. But of course important work in this area is being done all year round and we find ourselves in an

Career insight: bioimage analysis

Posted by Pradeep Rajasekhar, on 3 July 2020

I am a postdoctoral fellow based at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), Melbourne, Australia. I am originally from Kerala, India and travelled to Australia for my postgraduate studies almost 13 years ago. I came to Melbourne because of all the high quality and affordable educational opportunities, and fell in love with it for

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