Thank you. And yes we very much support the use of accessible colors 😄

Image was captured on the FV300 confocal microscope with a 60x/W NA 1.2 objective from Evident/Olympus. This is a Z-max intensity projection of a deconvolved stack.

Fluorescence microscopy image showing a green cellular ER network with magenta oval chloroplasts on a black background, with a 3 µm scale bar.

An undergraduate student in the lab, Andy Marchant, made this awesome image of a moss (Physcomitrium patens) apical chloronema cell.
This is a beautiful example of how the ER network looks in plant cells (in green). The chlorophyll autofluorescence is in magenta.
#microscopymonday #moss

Promotional image for the PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX. The promo has a purple background behind text over a green plant cell graphic with a black background. It also includes the details for the webinar including the date/time.

Promotional image for the PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX. The promo has a purple background behind text over a green plant cell graphic with a black background. It also includes the webinar's full abstract description.

We are a month away from the second installment of the Plant Cell Atlas Imaging Workshop Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX!

Don't forget to register! plantcellatlas.org/events

An art poster of George Washington Carver displayed in a university hallway.

An art poster on Phytoremediation displayed in a university hallway.

The Plant Science Art Exhibit is now on display at the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences!

This exhibit will be up for the rest of the semester to engage students and inform them about the history and potential of plant science!

Learn more about the exhibit: bit.ly/4byqtQo

🌱💚🎉

Sharing (again 😁) my review on regulation of chloroplast biogenesis.

First work of my emerging research group at @cbgpmadrid.bsky.social

Guard cells form the stomata pore, a microscopic opening on the surface of leaves and stems. This is the main site of gas exchange (O2 and CO2) and transpiration (water release).
The remaining epidermal cells surrounding the guard cells are not visible here.

A fluorescence image showing two curved, kidney-shaped plant guard cells forming a stomatal pore. The cells glow in bright magenta, outlining their overall shape, while clusters of distinct round and irregular structures inside them fluoresce green and yellow. The background is completely black.

I pulled this image from the archives of my PhD work, back when I was working with plant and yeast mitochondria.
These are two Arabidopsis guard cells, with their cytosol in magenta, mitochondria in yellow, and chlorophyll autofluorescence in green.
#microscopymonday, #plantcells, #guardcells

This is a maximum-intensity projection along Z from a deconvolved stack captured on a confocal FV3000 (Evident/Olympus) microscope with a 60x water (NA 1.2) objective.

Fluorescence microscopy image of a spherical cluster of chloroplasts, showing magenta-stained interiors surrounded by bright green outlines against a black background.

Moss (Physcomitrium patens) protoplasts (wallless cells) transformed with chloroplast envelope protein tagged with mGFP (green). The chlorophyll autofluorescence is in magenta.
The protrusions of the chloroplast envelope are called stromules.
#microscopymonday, #plantcells, #plantmicroscopy, #moss

This is a maximum-intensity projection along Z from a deconvolved stack captured on a confocal FV3000 (Evident/Olympus) microscope with a 60x water (NA 1.2) objective.

While the epidermis is a continuous layer, the leaf's uneven surface and differences in cell expression levels give it the appearance of multiple layers.
This stitched image (multiple fields of view merged together) was captured on an FV3000 confocal microscope from Evident/Olympus.

Fluorescent microscope image showing a dense network of bright green, irregularly shaped plant cells with glowing outlines against a dark background.

Surface (epidermal) cells of many plants are shaped like jigsaw puzzle pieces. 🧩
These are epidermal cells of tobacco (Nicotiana benthamiana) expressing cytosolic EGFP. The bright spherical structures are cell nuclei.
#microscopymonday, #plantcells, #plantmicroscopy

Promotional image for the PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX. The promo has a purple background behind text over a green plant cell graphic with a black background. It also includes the details for the webinar including the date/time.

Promotional image for the PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX. The promo has a purple background behind text over a green plant cell graphic with a black background. It also includes the webinar's full abstract description.

Registration is NOW OPEN for the second installment of the Plant Cell Atlas Imaging Workshop Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX.

You can learn more and register here: www.plantcellatlas.org/events

That's a great question. Unfortunately, we didn't continue imaging these samples, so I don't know.

I am not sure, but it would be cool. I will need to look into that.

Red fluorescence microscopy image showing a dense, mottled red signal across the field with a distinct dark, square-shaped region at the center where fluorescence is absent or reduced; a 100 µm scale bar appears in the lower-right corner.

We were testing lasers and the spectral ability of our confocal (FV3000) on a zoomed-in section of a Brassica rapa leaf. But when we zoomed out, we saw that the lasers we used photobleached chlorophyll autofluorescence in the square area we had zoomed in on. We used a 10x/0.4 objective for this.

Image shows a gray-scale image of many circular-shaped yeast cells. There are also many streaks caused by fast-moving cells.

These Brewer's yeast cells were in a hurry!
This was captured with a point-scanning confocal microscope, which scans one point (pixel) at a time, moving from left to right and top to bottom. As a consequence, cells moving faster than the scan speed appear as streaks or exhibit distortions.

Featured image with Ivan Radin - FocalPlane Featured image with Ivan Radin - News

Our featured image shows epidermal cells of a tobacco leaf expressing cytosolic GFP. The image was acquired by Ivan Radin @radinbio.bsky.social.
You can read more about the image and Ivan’s research in our post ⤵️
focalplane.biologists.com/2026/01/16/f...
#FluorescenceFriday

Bryophytes are not early diverging land plants Phylogenetic trees have permeated biology. However, an understanding of how to interpret phylogenies has lagged behind, notably in publications outside of evolutionary biology. Here I argue that some...

I absolutely love this paper from @stuartmcdaniel.bsky.social
It is a part of a must-read list for all new members of my lab.

Bryophytes are not early diverging land plants - McDaniel - 2021 - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This is a deconvolved Z-maximum projection of an image captured on the FV3000 confocal microscope from Olympus using a 60x/1.2W objective.

The image shows a round protoplast filled with green, evenly distributed ovoid-shaped chloroplasts. In the center of the cell is the spherical nucleus in magenta.

Happy New Year, everyone. For this #microscopymonday, here is a moss (Physcomitrium patens) protoplast (wall-less cell) transformed with a nuclear marker (in magenta). The much brighter area is the nucleolus. The chlorophyll autofluorescence is in green.
#moss #plantcells

Today I made a small but momentous start to work in 2026 by changing a single number.

I renamed the file “Papers to write and submit in 2025” to “Papers to write and submit in 2026”.

Stay tuned for more file updates on 1st January 2027.

EMPIAR-11830 #ChlamyDataset #TeamTomo 🧪

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Fig. 1.Current expansion microscopy (ExM) methods in plant systems and other potential applications. Figure shows a schematic diagram of digested, permeabilized, expanded plant organelles, cells, or tissues embedded in a hydrogel in the center. Left panel showcases ExM techniques successfully applied in plant systems. These include chloroplast and nuclei (isolated organelles), Chlamydomonas, tobacco BY-2 cells, protoplasts, Arabidopsis seed embryos, and Arabidopsis roots. Right panel outlines other potential applications of ExM in other areas of plant biology including developmental biology, plant-microbe interactions, and spatial and single-cell biology. Created in BioRender. Cox, K. (2025) https://BioRender.com/ok72cvy.

🔬 EXPERT VIEW 🔬

In this review, Cox & Czymmek cover the recent developments of expansion microscopy techniques in plant systems and provides examples of their applications in plant biology research.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 @kcox-bioguy.bsky.social

Streptophyte terrestrialization and the conquest of land by embryophytes. Illustration adapted from Fig. 1 of de Vries & Archibald (2018; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.14975) by Debbie Maizels.

Our #VirtualIssue on Plant terrestrialization focuses on piecing together #streptophyte trait #evolution and curating research that has contributed to advances in the evolutionary inference of (early) land plant form and function 👇

📚 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

#PlantScience

🧵1/2

A crucial step towards understanding tip growth in plants. Ivan Radin @radinbio.bsky.social (University of Minnesota) highlights work from Ryken et al. of the Bezanilla lab (rupress.org/jcb/article/...) in Spotlight: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#CellSignaling #PlantBiology #PlantCellBiology

The image shows one Sundew plant in a pot surrounded by small green moss plants. The sundew plant is reddish in color and has leaves covered with sticky tentacles.

These amazing plants grow as small rosettes, and their leaves are covered with tentacles that secrete mucilage on the tips. The plants use the mucilage to adhere the insect prey long enough for the tentacles and the leaf to curve and entrap the prey.

The image shows a close-up of the tentacle tip from the leaf of a carnivorous sundew plant (Drosera spatulata). Tentacles are reddish in color and have a thin stalk with a large head at the end, which secretes a drop of clear mucilage that completely surrounds it.

The image shows a close-up of the tentacles from the leaf of a carnivorous sundew plant (Drosera spatulata). One is in the foreground and in focus, while the rest are blurry in the background. Tentacles are reddish in color and have a thin stalk with a large head at the end, which secretes a drop of clear mucilage that completely surrounds it.

These close-ups of mucilage-covered tentacle tips from the leaf of a carnivorous sundew plant (Drosera spatulata) definitely have a strong holiday vibe, so I am posting them just in time for the holidays. Happy Holidays.
#microscopymonday #carnivorousplants

Spotlight: Ivan Radin discusses new work from Ryken and colleagues (rupress.org/jcb/article/...) which shows how localization and function of autoinhibitory calcium ATPases maintains the strength of the tip-focus Ca2²⁺ gradient during polarized plant growth. rupress.org/jcb/article/...
#PlantBiology