Presented by Emily Benson, Lead Research Technologist, Cleveland Clinic, and Aubrey Funke, Life Science Electron Microscopy Product Marketing Manager, Carl Zeiss Microscopy

Life takes place in three dimensions. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) offers opportunities to explore intricate, ultrastructural 3D information of tissues and cells with techniques that are known collectively as volume EM. Join Emily Benson, Lead Research Technologist at Cleveland Clinic, and Aubrey Funke, Life Science Electron Microscopy Product Marketing Manager at Carl Zeiss Microscopy, to discover why volume EM has been named a key technology to watch in 2023. Learn about the ultrastructural imaging power of these individual techniques and how volume EM can spark inspiration in your own cell biology research. Receive an introduction to the growing Volume EM Community and discover how Emily Benson uses serial block face imaging as a key technology in her electron microscopy core throughout a variety of life science applications. Discover the latest volume EM solution from ZEISS. ZEISS Volutome is the next generation of serial block-face imaging: highly automated, fully integrated and optimized for volume data creation. See the features that save you time while allowing you to access large volume data with superb image quality, at low kV.

Presented by Randy Stout, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences, New York Institute of Technology

Connexin proteins connect cells in all major human organs. The most widely studied connexin, Cx43, is important in diseases of heart, bone, and brain. Cx43 has a short half-life (~3hrs) and interesting but complicated cellular trafficking, membrane localization, channel opening/closing regulation, and endocytosis characteristics. Along with other labs, we have used techniques such as Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleach (FRAP) and others to study the dynamics of gap junction supramolecular protein complexes and the Cx43 protein binding partners that make up the Gap Junction Nexus. We found that the structure and dynamics of gap junctions depends on the connexin type and can transition between stability states depending on cell physiology. Evidence from numerous labs indicates spatial organization within the gap junction nexus that is of size scales and protein densities that limit utility standard approaches in this area of research. We recently turned to the new Dynamics Profiler tool to gain insights into gap junction cell biology that are not possible with other techniques. This has allowed us to obtain data measuring protein concentration, mobility, and diffusion characteristics in smaller spaces and a wider range of labeling densities. These data made possible with Dynamics Profiler, along with other techniques, will be critical to better understanding intercellular communication in tissues, and for building a useful computational model of human cells.

Presented by Kirstin Elgass, Ph.D., Product Marketing Manager, Carl Zeiss Microscopy

The ZEISS Lattice SIM super-resolution technology has taken research beyond the diffraction limit of conventional microscopy, giving you gentle super-resolution imaging with incredibly high speed and the ability to image deeper into challenging samples beyond 120 nm. Lattice SIM2 uses a 2D Lattice pattern that only requires translation, no rotation, for improved speed and higher contrast for deeper penetration into samples. SIM Apotome mode uses 2D striped illumination also without rotation for ultra-fast, exceptional optical sectioning. In combination with our SIM² reconstruction algorithm, both technologies keep pushing SIM to a new level.

Technology that enables imaging the details of biological samples with super-resolution is great, but each application comes with specific challenges and requirements, for example: imaging speed to capture dynamics, large fields of view and excellent 3D capabilities for contextual imaging of larger samples, sensitivity to image delicate samples, or resolution at the edge of what's physically possible to reveal subcellular ultrastructure.

If you wish you could meet these requirements for each of your samples in the best possible way, while remaining flexible across scales, then join us at ASCB to be among the first to be introduced to a new family of ZEISS imaging systems that will allow you to reveal cellular behavior and inter-cellular dynamics, the vibrant sub-organelle network of life, and life across scales-down to molecular details.