infocus #33 March 2014 The Tara Oceans Expedition

Reynaud and Gutierrez-Heredia discuss the Tara Oceans Expedition – a unique circumnavigation of the earth on a 36 metre schooner to analyse and collect plankton communities and coral specimens, the fundamental building blocks upon which the largest ecosystems are built.

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.105

The tiny, the imperceptible, the invisible: one might imagine that the indiscernible - due to their apparently insignificant qualities - could not have the importance of the large charismatic animals, that they could not have the effects of the organisms we can actually see. What this kind of mentality is unable to perceive is that it is precisely because of this concealment that these creatures are capable of multiplying exponentially; becoming the fundamental building blocks upon which the largest ecosystems are built.

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Authors

Emmanuel G. Reynaud

University College Dublin

Emmanuel G. Reynaud received his PhD in 1999 at the University Paris-XI Orsay, France, where he studied cell cycle regulation in rhabdomyosarcoma derived cell lines. He went on an EMBO long term fellowship in Dr Rainer’s Pepperkok laboratory in EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany, where he developed new approaches in cell biology such as the combination of microcontact printing and laser nanosurgery for in toto golgi apparatus removal. In order to further explore the possibility of light microscopy, he moved to Prof. Ernst H.K. Stelzer lab to help with the development of light sheet microscopy in collaboration with Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH leading to the release of the Light Sheet Z.1 microscope and several patents. He was appointed Stokes Lecturer in Cell Biology at University College Dublin in Ireland in 2009 while running the imaging platform onboard the schooner Tara during the Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2012). Currently, he leads the “R” Lab, a multidisciplinary environment working on 3D cell biology from 3D cell culture to 3D microscopy and 3D printing.

Email:: emmanuel.reynaud@ucd.ie

Luis Gutiérrez Heredia

Luis Gutiérrez Heredia completed his PhD at University College Dublin in use of 3D imaging systems for marine biology research. He got his MSc in Biological Photography and Imaging from the University of Nottingham, England in 2010. He also participated in the Tara Oceans Expedition in 2009 and is the image curator of the image database of the expedition from 2009 to 2010. He is deeply interested in the use of 3D imaging in census of marine biology, from microscopic organisms to macroscopic colonies.