Banner image courtesy of Annalisa Bellandi, John Innes Centre
The 12th Botanical Microscopy Meeting is the latest in a long running series of RMS sponsored meetings, dating back to the 1960s, encompassing all aspects of bioimaging relating to modern plant cell biology. There will be a plenary speaker on the Sunday evening plus a further 7 keynote speakers, covering six scientific sessions. The rest of the programme will be chosen from offered talks, with a poster session on the Monday evening. Topics will be a mix of state-of-the art microscopy combined with the latest developments in plant cell biology, including morphogenesis, plant membranes, organelle dynamics, plant-microbe interactions as well as quantitative imaging and image analysis. There will be an exhibition on Monday to Wednesday. The conference dinner will be at The Assembly House, a Georgian gem, described by historians as one of the most important buildings in Norwich.
Optional tours will be available around the JIC Bioimaging unit (light and electron microscopy facilities) and also to see The JIC Special Collection; this rare book collection is regarded as particularly outstanding, not only because it embraces five centuries of botanical literature, but also because it houses many works that are landmarks in the history of plant science, the earliest of which is Ortus Sanitatus, a herbal dated 1511. It also includes extremely beautifully illustrated and highly valuable works such Les liliacées by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, 1807.
We look forward to welcoming you to Norwich!
Congratulations to this year's Poster and Image Competition winners!
The RMS would like to congratulate Jen McGaley of Cambridge University, who received both the Chris Hawes Poster Prize Award and the Image Competition Prize at Botanical Microscopy Meeting 2023.
Jen's winning poster was titled Spatiotemporal dynamics of nutrient exchange during arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, while her winning image, titled Live view of a concealed symbiosis, revealed the intricacies of an arbuscule inside a living rice root.
Congratulations also go to Ana Romina Fox of UCLouvain, who was the runner-up in the Poster Competition, with her poster titled PIP aquaporin interactions at the reticulum endoplasmic-plasma membrane interphase.
Scientific Organisers
Kim Findlay
Kim is head of Bioimaging at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. Her degree was in Biology and Physics at King’s College, London. With over 34 years' experience in light and electron microscopy and more than 90 publications involving the use of TEM, SEM or confocal microscopy, in 2015 she was awarded the RMS Vice Presidents Medal for microscopy research and laboratory support. Her early focus on the plant cytoskeleton developed into a wider interest in plant and microbial sciences. She has made particularly important and long-standing contributions to Streptomyces research. Kim teaches cryo-SEM at the RMS EM school and taught on the RMS cryo-EM course in the past. She is regularly involved in Outreach activities, running tours and demonstrations for the public and young students. Kim won an award from the University of East Anglia, where she is an honorary lecturer, for her outstanding contribution to public and community engagement.
Christine Faulkner
Dr Christine Faulkner is a Group Leader at the John Innes Centre (UK). Her research interests lie in how cell-to-cell communication underpins immunity and infection, focusing on how plasmodesmata regulate cell-to-cell exchange of endogenous signals and resources during plant-microbe interactions. To address these interests, the lab use a range of quantitative, live imaging approaches to study inter-organism molecular interactions at subcellular and sub-tissue resolution.
Patrick Hussey
Patrick J. Hussey is the Professor of Plant Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Durham. He received his PhD in Biology from the University of Kent at Canterbury in association with the John Innes Centre in Norwich. After postdoctoral work at the University of Minnesota and the John Innes Centre, he took up a lectureship in Royal Holloway University of London where he was awarded a Personal Chair in 1999. He moved to the University of Durham in 2000. His main interest is in the structure, function and regulation of the plant cytoskeleton and its potential role in biotechnology.
RMS Contacts
Kate Wooding
kate@rms.org.uk
01865 254761
Contact Kate for Outreach committee queries, Diploma queries, RMS Events and mmc Series Conference queries.
Dawn Hopkins
dawn@rms.org.uk
01865 254774
Contact Dawn for corporate opportunities and RMS Corporate Advisory Board (CAB) enquiries.
Nick Cameron
nick@rms.org.uk
01865 254772
Contact Nick for exhibition and sponsorship event queries and RMS Corporate Membership.
Ulla Neumann
Dr Ulla Neumann received her degree in Biology from the University of Marburg, Germany, and a PhD from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France, working on the haustorial structure of African parasitic plants. Subsequently, she was a postdoc in Professor Chris Hawes lab at Oxford Brookes University working on small Rab GTPases and involved in setting up a BBSRC-funded high-pressure freezing unit. Since 2008, she is the TEM expert in the Central Microscopy facility of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, adding an ultrastructural, cell biological angle to many research projects as varied as seed coat development, morphogenesis of different leaf shapes, plant-pathogen interactions, or stamen maturation in barley. In recent years, she has been particularly interested in 3D EM, CLEM and XRM techniques in the field of plant microscopy. Ulla is member of the RMS since 2000 and scientific editor to the Journal of Microscopy since 2019.
Richard Smith
Dr Richard Smith is a Group Leader in the Computational and Systems Biology department of the John Innes Centre in Norwich. He uses computer simulation modeling to answer questions in plant development, with a focus on biophysical models of plant cell growth. His group has also developed the MorphoGraphX image processing software that is specialized for image processing on surfaces, typically extracted from 3D time-lapse confocal data.
Imogen Sparkes
Dr Imogen Sparkes received a BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in plant biology from the University of Leeds. From there she moved to Oxford Brookes University to gain expertise in live cell imaging with Prof Chris Hawes. In 2012 she accepted a lectureship position at the University of Exeter, and in 2017 moved to the University of Bristol as senior lecturer. Her microscopy work has been recognised by the Linnean Society resulting in the Trail-Crisp award in 2016, and the young scientist of the year award from the SEB in 2006. Currently her research is focused on determining the molecular and biophysical processes that govern organelle movement and interaction in plant cells. These dynamic events are dissected using a combination of molecular cell biology with a range of imaging techniques including conventional confocal, TIRF, spinning disc, FRET-FLIM and optical tweezers.