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The FocalPlane image competition 2020 winner is Tejeshwar Rao from Alexa L. Mattheyses’ lab at the University of Alabama for his image ‘Owl Eyes’ (above). The image depicts duplicated Cos-7 cell plated on a tension gauge tether surface. After stimulation with epidermal growth factor (EGF), the cell was fixed and stained for F-actin (orange hot) using phalloidin and for focal adhesions (blue-green) using a paxillin antibody. Integrin forces, i.e. open tension probes, are shown in greyscale. Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy was employed to acquire the images and processed using NIS elements and reconstructed in Fiji (ImageJ). More about Tejeshwar’s work coming on FocalPlane soon.

Microscopy Open Access collection 2020

Posted by FocalPlane, on 19 October 2020

Here on FocalPlane, Open Access Week is especially close to our hearts as it coincides with the birthday of the father of microscopy, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (24 October). So every year for Open Access Week, we will be listing all the microscopy-related Open Access articles from The Company of Biologists journals on FocalPlane under the

How I got into the Flamingo project, a new way of sharing custom-built light sheet microscopes

Posted by Michael Weber, on 12 October 2020

Sharing microscopy technology is crucial for biomedical research. This is the story how I joined Jan Huisken and his team to give other scientists quick access to custom-built light sheet microscopes.

FocalPlane image competition voting is open!

Posted by FocalPlane, on 5 October 2020

After 3 weeks of submissions we are happy to announce that the submissions gallery is now up and running for 1 week (until 12 October, 5pm UK time)! We have 83 fantastic entries from 45 different people who have used a range of different microscopy techniques to acquire their beautiful images. To see our competition