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… Marcel Dickmanns and Laura Copeland – recordings

Posted by FocalPlane, on 26 October 2026

In October, we heard from Marcel Dickmanns on ‘Exploring the Molecular Landscape within Plant Cells by Cryo-Electron Tomography’ and Laura Copeland on ‘Multimodal Quantitative Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy and Fluorescence Imaging Reveals Stable Bacterial Colonisation Architecture Under Phosphate Limitation’. You can find the recordings of the talks here.

2026 CCP-volumeEM Community Meeting

Posted by Helen Spiers, on 26 October 2026

You are invited to join us on Wednesday, 18 November at the National Railway Museum in York, as we bring together the volume electron microscopy community to reflect on recent progress, explore emerging challenges and help shape future priorities for CCP-volumeEM.

JCS snapshot – Dissecting assembly mechanisms of the novel ECM protein SNED1

Posted by FocalPlane, on 26 October 2026

In our latest JCS snapshot we hear from Alexandra Naba who, in two companion papers together with Leanna Leverton, Dharma Pally and team, characterised the understudied ECM protein SNED1 and dissected its role in ECM construction and remodelling. In this video, Alexandra takes us through the key findings from their research.

What is the cost of knowledge?

Posted by Emily Dearlove, on 23 October 2026

To mark International Open Access Week 2026, The Company of Biologists has been reflecting on this year’s theme: ‘The Cost of Knowledge’. In our latest blog post, ‘The true cost of knowledge: exploring value in publishing‘, we reflect on what researchers value in publishing and who bears the cost of creating that value. We also

Featured image with Emily Chan

Posted by FocalPlane, on 23 October 2026

Our featured image, acquired by Emily Chan, shows a duckweed (Lemna minor) colony and the regions with actively dividing cells within the colony (coloured green).

JCS snapshot – Multimodal coordination of ammonium transporters helps fission yeast survive nitrogen starvation

Posted by FocalPlane, on 19 October 2026

In our latest JCS snapshot we hear from Shet Lee Ng who, together with Yukiko Nakase and team, discovered that multiple ammonium transporters in fission yeast are coordinated by transcriptional and localisation regulation in response to nitrogen starvation. In this snapshot, Shet Lee take us through the key findings from their research.