Collaborations
TREC
With the Dudin lab and Hamel/Guichard lab, we joined EMBL’s TREC mission as a plugin project (planExM). Focusing largely on sampled marine microplankton, we used U-ExM investigate the ultrastructure of these heretofore unseen microbes.
With the Saka group and the Schwab team, we aim to combine expansion microscopy with further techniques such as 18s RNA FISH and electron microscopy studies.
While sampling the European coastline, we visited two culture collections along the way, the RCC and BMCC, getting access to just over 200 cultures of planktonic species.
Read our results of expanding all of those species and more in our recent publication here
ExAME
Following our planExM study, we are now expanding microbes across the eukaryotic tree of life. Our Expansion Microscopy Atlas of Microbial Eukaryotes (ExAME) project is funded by the Betty and Gordon Moore foundation.
We will continue to provide all generated data to the community and train as many people as we can along the way. Joining us on this endeavor is Omaya Dudin, lead of the project, Thomas Richards, and many collaborators and friends providing us with expertise and samples.
If you want to try expansion on your favourite organisms, please reach out to us to discuss options!
CEREEP - ECOTRON IDF
We visited the Ecotron Facility in Nemours, France with the Advanced Mobile Laboratory (AML) and the Land-Sea Interface team of TREC at EMBL and Ben Engel’s group. The goal of this expedition was to test sampling, isolation, live imaging and fixation techniques on soil, sediment and freshwater samples. We are currently processing samples from this expedition.
CELLBLOOM
We participated in a month-long mesocosm study at the Estación de Ciencias Mariñas de Toralla, affiliated with the Universidade de Vigo in Vigo, Spain. We wanted to understand how phytoplankton bloom. We focused on inferring mitotic mechanisms using single-cell imaging approaches for both live and fixed samples, and recording population dynamics throughout the course of the bloom.
This expedition was carried out with the Vincent Group, Schwab Team, and the Advanced Mobile Laboratory from EMBL, and in partnership with the labs of Emilio Manuel Fernandez Suarez (UVigo) and Benjamin Bailleul (IBPC, CNRS), as well as Fairscope. We are currently processing samples and data from this expedition.
100 Diatom Genomes Project
This project is set to sequence the genomes of 100 diatom species across the tree of life. The Dey Group is participating alongside the Vincent Group @ EBML and the Dudin Group @ UNIGE to contribute Expansion Microscopy images of these 100 diatom species to the project. This is a collaborative effort involving many labs, including the lab of Thomas Mock (UEA, Norwich), Eveline Pinseel (Ghent University), Klaas Vandepoele (Ghent University), and more