We will welcome Mark H. Ellisman, Ph.D.; Distinguished Professor of Neurosciences; Director of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
His talk will be about Probes, Instruments and Algorithms to Propel Multiscale-Multimodal Imaging Investigations of the Brain in Health and Disease.
Talk abstractA grand challenge of modern biology is to understand mechanisms of molecular, cellular and tissue scale physiology across a daunting range of spatial and temporal scales. Current imaging methods leave significant gaps in our knowledge, limiting our ability to connect information across scales. How multiple methods are now being combined to fill and help bridge critical gaps will be shared; including where recent advances to multi-tilt electron tomography (mtEMT) and development of new probes for correlated light (LM), x-ray microCT (XRM), correlated multi-ion mass spectroscopy imaging (MIMS) and EM (MIMS-EM) and state-of-the-art 3D EM technologies add to our knowledge about structure and function in complex biological systems. Examples of questions being addressed in ongoing research projects will be described to illustrate how development and application of new contrasting methods, imaging tools and data analysis strategies are allowing the observation of otherwise complex or hidden relationships between cellular, subcellular and molecular constituents of cells. For example, how advances in methods apply to ongoing studies on the intact normal brain and to analyze brain cells and synapses during learning (or when cells and issues respond to stressors inducing degenerative brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease) will be shown. Recent accomplishments to be described include determination of the higher order structure and functional organization of chromatin of intact cell nuclei; the analysis of actin-associated structures within specific brain postsynaptic structures “dendritic spines”; as well as analysis of the extracellular matrix (ECM) around multiple types of synapses of mammalian brains. The ECM work explores Roger Tsien’s theory (2013, PNAS) postulating that the brain stores life-long memories by locally managing the activity of extracellular proteases to edit ECM and thereby influences the locations and relative strengths of synapses over time scales as long as a life-span.
His talk will be followed by a lecture from the series on Neurodegeneration featuring Dr Dean Pountney, who will talk about “Tubes, Channels and Iron: Intercellular Connectivity, Glymphatic Clearance and Iron Accumulation in Parkinson’s Disease”.
A ‘meet the speaker’ session will follow after the talks from 12 to 1 PM.
For more information about the talk from Dean Pountney, please click here