FocalPlane - Where biology meets microscopy

Welcome to FocalPlane

FocalPlane is a community site for anyone who uses microscopy in their research. It is a place where you can interact with a global community of imaging scientists, engineers, chemists, and bioimage analysts.

FocalPlane is your site and once registered, you are free to share a blog post, add an image to our gallery, post a job advert or put up an event listing.

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Recent posts

FocalPlane features… membrane trafficking

Posted by FocalPlane, on 16 September 2025

Registration is open for our upcoming mini-symposium together with the popular Membrane Trafficking webinar series, organised by Francesca Bottanelli, Felix Campelo and Ishier Raote. Our event, on Thursday 25 September, will be a celebration of the membrane trafficking community.

Register for Journal of Cell Science Meeting on Imaging Cell Dynamics

Posted by FocalPlane, on 15 September 2025

Registration is open for Journal of Cell Science Meeting on Imaging Cell Dynamics. The meeting will bring together experts working at the interface between cell biology and imaging, with a focus on researchers who use advanced light and electron microscopy approaches, and novel image analysis tools.

There and Back Again – An MBL Story

Posted by Falk Schneider, on 14 September 2025

In May 2025, I had the pleasure of returning to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to teach in the PAIR-UP Microscopy course. It was a truly special experience as I not only got to meet and mentor many bright and curious young scientists, but it also marked a return to a

Featured image with Mathieu Preußner

Posted by FocalPlane, on 12 September 2025

Our featured image, acquired by Mathieu Preußner, is a lateral view of the overlying gill arches in 1-month-old Danio rerio expressing endothelial kdrl:mCherry. Clarity-based tissue clearing of the sample enabled comprehensive image acquisition using a Nikon Ti spinning disk system. In ImageJ, the hyperstack was modified using a temporally colour-coded lookup table.

JCS snapshot – Cytotoxic T lymphocytes adapt to the loss of Cdc42

Posted by FocalPlane, on 10 September 2025

In our latest JCS snapshot, we hear from Adam Rochussen who, together with Gillian Griffiths and Claire Ma, discovered that cytotoxic T lymphocytes are able to adapt to the loss of the key polarity factor Cdc42. In this snapshot, Adam takes us through the key findings from their research.

Microscopy preprints – new tools and techniques in imaging

Posted by FocalPlane, on 5 September 2025

Here is a curated selection of preprints posted recently on new tools and techniques in imaging. Let us know if we are missing any recent preprints that are on your reading list!

Featured image with David Grainger

Posted by FocalPlane, on 29 August 2025

Our featured image, acquired by David Grainger, is a colour-coded depth projection of the blood endothelial cells of the E14.5 mouse embryonic thymus and surrounding structures. A 200 μm-thick vibratome section was immunostained for endomucin and imaged on a Zeiss LSM980 confocal microscope and depth-encoded using a rainbow LUT before performing a maximum intensity projection.

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