"High-Speed Microscope for Biological Imaging"
https://www.optica-opn.org/home/newsroom/2025/august/high-speed_microscope_for_biological_imaging/
Sara Abrahamsson's lab delivers again!
Paper at:
"High-speed 3D imaging with a 25-camera multifocus microscope", Miyasaki et al. 2025
https://opg.optica.org/optica/fulltext.cfm?uri=optica-12-8-1230&id=575640
#neuroscience #GCaMP #CaImaging #Drosophila #Celegans #DrosophilaLarva
Commentary of:
"Aberrant hippocampal Ca2+ micro-waves following synapsin-dependent adeno-associated viral expression of Ca2+ indicators" by Masala et al. 2024.
Loren Looger, legendary protein wrangler, who always generously shared their genetically encoded calcium indicators and more while still in development and unpublished, is asking for labs to co-write grants with him:
"Dear science world, I need help, please. If you like the tools and data we generate, and our shareware attitude, can you please co-apply for funding with us? It turns out that I'm terrible at writing grants, and we need $$ or else we can't make more GCaMPs, RCaMPs, SnFRs (we've branched out to neuromodulators and neuropeptides), FPs, viruses, tags, etc. We'll also make whatever you want, but we need $$ to do it. DM or email me, sooner is better. Sorry to be desperate, but we want to keep doing this, and I'm not sure we can."
https://profiles.ucsd.edu/loren.looger
#neuroscience #GCaMP #RCaMP #SnFR #ProteinEngineering #GECIs
#Ants have a specialized #communication processing center that has not been found in other social #insects.
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-ants-specialized-communication-center-social.html
Have you ever noticed an ant in your home, only to find that a week later the whole colony has moved in? The traps you set up catch only a few of these ants, but soon, the rest of the colony has mysteriously disappeared. Now, a study published in the journal Cell on June 14 explores how certain danger-signaling pheromones—the scent markers ants emit to communicate with each other—activate a specific part of the ants' brains and can change the behavior of an entire nest.
GCaMP8 is out!
"Fast and sensitive GCaMP calcium indicators for imaging neural populations", by Y. Zhang, M. Rózsa, et al. 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05828-9
"‘jGCaMP8’ sensors, based on the calcium-binding protein calmodulin and a fragment of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, have ultra-fast kinetics (half-rise times of 2 ms) and the highest sensitivity for neural activity reported for a protein-based calcium sensor."
Tested in both larva and adult #Drosophila, and in mouse.
Genetically encoded calcium indicators are becoming available in social insects.
After the first expression in honeybees (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.22.489138v2), now the first GCaMP-expressing ants have been created and used to study the coding of alarm pheromones in the antennal lobe.
#GECIs #GCaMP #twophoton #neuroscience #ants #olfaction #antennallobe #pheromones
Albert Cardona
CellBioNews
Guillaume Etter
NeurophysicsLab Albrecht Haase