We congratulate Giulia for being the first recipient of the vEM Ambassador Travel Award! and thank her for advocating for our vEM Community!

Giulia Casal is a PhD student in Prof. Alison Lloyd’s lab at the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology (LMCB) at University College London (UCL), where she is studying the blood nerve barrier (BNB) of the peripheral nervous system. Recently Giulia presented her research at the Glia in Health & Disease Conference, held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in Laurel Hollow, New York, in August 2024.

Giulia represented our growing Volume Electron Microscopy (vEM) Community, which is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Volume Electron Microscopy (vEM) is a group of techniques that reveal the 3D ultrastructure of cells and tissues through continuous depths of at least 1 micrometer.

We are also happy to announce a new vEM Case Study now being published at volumeEM.org/case-studies.html, which shows Giulia Casal, Ian White, Jemima Burden and Alison C. Lloyd’s research, which is linked to her presentation at the Glia in Health & Disease Conference.

Linked case study: 10.1242/focalplane.22865

Interview

How did you find out about the award?

I first heard about the Volume EM Ambassador Travel Award through conversations with our EM facility team Prof. Jemima Burden and Dr. Ian White, as we often discuss volume EM and the exciting developments in the field. Jemima mentioned the vEM community’s travel awards during one of these chats. I use X to stay updated on the latest science and publications and have been following @VolumeEM1 for a while and always enjoyed their case study highlights (short summaries of biological discoveries using volume EM). Then, right around the time I was applying for the Glia conference, I saw a post about the travel award—perfect timing!

What did you use the award for?

I used the award to attend the Glia Conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (CSHL) in Long Island. As this was my second international conference as a PhD student and my university (UCL) understandably prioritizes first-time conference attendees for travel funding, I was seeking support to cover my travel expenses. Applying for the Volume EM Ambassador Travel Award was straightforward—I simply highlighted my use and implementation of vEM approaches, filled out a form, and submitted it to the vEM community. The award really helped make attending this conference possible!

The conference sounds really interesting, What opportunities came up and what did you present?

This was my second time attending the CSHL Glia Conference, and it’s always a fantastic experience. I love connecting with fellow glia enthusiasts from all over the world. During this conference, I met Morgan Amick, from the Spirou Lab at the University of South Florida (https://spiroulabadcl.com/), who also does volumeEM (SBF-SEM) and ended up having useful and animated discussions both about our research and the volume approach.

I was fortunate of being selected to give a short talk, where I introduced our recent paper in Developmental Cell and shared some new results, including volume EM data.

To give some background, our paper focused on the unique characteristics and regulation of blood barriers in the nervous system, specifically the blood-nerve barrier (BNB) in the peripheral nervous system (PNS). While blood vessels in the body can vary in permeability, such as those in the kidneys or liver, the vessels in the nervous system form tight barriers. These barriers, like the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in the central nervous system (CNS), are critical for maintaining a stable neural environment.

Unlike the well-studied BBB, the BNB is far less understood, despite its relevance to conditions like peripheral neuropathies and pain. Our study aimed to fill this gap by investigating the vascular unit of the BNB to understand how it functions and can be modulated. In summary, we discovered that the BNB’s structure is different from the BBB. In a mouse model mimicking nerve injury, we found that the BNB can be transiently opened, allowing increased transcytosis in endothelial cells—a process driven by Schwann cells, which are critical for nerve regeneration. This finding opens up the possibility of targeting the BNB for therapeutic delivery to the PNS.

EM was instrumental in this study, as it allowed us to visualise all the components of the vascular unit in detail. However, it was the introduction of volume EM that truly revolutionised our ability to study the complex 3D cellular interactions along the BNB’s vessels, providing unprecedented insights.

How did using Array Tomography SEM (AT-SEM) benefit your research?

Having access to AT-SEM was crucial for this project. Working with amazing Ian was a great experience. His expertise significantly streamlined the process of acquiring large volumes of data from peripheral nerves. The AT-SEM system allowed us to map entire regions at a lower resolution in Z depth before final resolution imaging, rather than relying on a single image. This capability was essential, as it enabled us to carefully select and verify the quality of blood vessels within the nerve fascicle (barrier blood vessels) or outside (non-barrier blood vessels) before committing to high-resolution imaging.

This approach also provided the flexibility to optimise the resolution as needed, ensuring we captured the most accurate and detailed images possible. If we needed even higher resolution or specific data from certain areas, we could easily return to the same sample and re-image those regions. This iterative process allowed us to gather more comprehensive and nuanced data from the same nerve, enhancing the overall depth and quality of our study.

How did the EM collaboration come about?

We’re super lucky at the LMCB to have Jemima and Ian, who are at the cutting edge of vEM research and development. The collaboration between our lab (Lloyd lab) and Jemima and Ian started years ago on the BNB project, with Dr. Ilaria Napoli and Dr. Liza Malong both building the groundwork for our recent paper on the BNB. I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the collaboration and and the proximity of our labs really fostered dynamic discussions and idea-sharing, which helped us refine our approach to studying the BNB (and on other projects!). If you’re not as lucky to have an in-house EM facility, the volumeEM community actually has a handy map that lets you find EM facilities doing volume EM near you.

What is next for you?

I’m in the final year of my PhD, and while in the U.S. for the Glia conference, I visited a few labs for potential postdoc positions, I’m excited for the next step in my scientific career! First, though, I need to focus on finishing and defending my PhD thesis. I’m particularly enthusiastic to publishing one of my thesis chapters, where I used volume EM to explore the nanoscale characteristics of barrier and non-barrier blood vessels. Together with some students I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve been using WebKnossos, a web-based platform for visualising and segmenting large 3D datasets, and I’m looking forward to making both the volume EM datasets and segmentations publicly available when we publish.

Giulia’s Case Study

Giulia, Ian and Jemima have also put together a case study where they show their research in the cellular composition of the Blood Nerve Barrier using a vEM technique: AT-SEM.

Check out this new case study here: 10.1242/focalplane.22865

Are you also interested in submitting a Case Study using vEM? Contact our Outreach Working Group!

You too can become a vEM ambassador!

Are you interested in becoming a vEM Ambassador and receiving a travel award? If you are scheduled to attend a conference soon such as Neuroscience 2024 and would like to highlight the vEM community, you can apply for a vEM Ambassador Travel Award. Financial support is available for eligible applicants. For more information, please visit our website: https://www.volumeem.org/vemambassador.html

Want to find a vEM near you?

Check out our global vEM infrastructure map with more than 100 facilities (and counting)! At our interactive map you can filter the vEM facilities by the vEM technique you are looking for (i.e. SBD-SEM, FIB-SEM, Array Tomography, etc..) see image below as reference. You will be also able to see if these facilities are open to the public and see a website link for each facility.

https://www.volumeem.org/vem-map.html

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