Irene Manton was a pioneer of electron microscopy.

She produced the first diagrammatic reconstruction of the 9+2 microtubular structure of the #cilium in 1952. When she showed her beautiful micrographs at international meetings, the audience would cheer and break into applause.

And she mortgaged her house to buy an electron microscope!

https://www.embrc.eu/newsroom/news/irene-manton-algal-cell-biologist-and-her-electron-microscope

#microscopy @biology #WomenInScience #science

Nice piece on a large zooplankton survey by Leonid Moroz in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/05/ocean-genome-atlas-project-scientists-plankton-dna-secrets-human-biology-sailing-boats @biology #plankton

Such a perfect ending for a paper!

"The animals themselves did not long survive in the aquarium. A slow process of dissolution set in at some point on the body, and gradually more and more of the tissue melted away till only the tentacle- and brain-region remained. This crept about for a few days, but finally it, too, disintegrated. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, May 12, 1893."

Wheeler, W. M. (1894). Journal of Morphology, 9(2), 195–201. doi:10.1002/jmor.1050090203

@biology

New paper from Ikeda et al. on the biogenesis of chitin bristles in the annelid #Platynereis with nice #vEM reconstructions and a chitin synthase knockout.
Bristles are formed in a process of biological 3D printing. @biology
#microscopy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48044-3

Still time to sign up to our COS Symposium 2024

"Life in Context: Organismal sensing and adaptation in the natural environment"

in Heidelberg July 22-23, 2024.

Free registration.

https://www.cos.uni-heidelberg.de/en/centre-for-organismal-studies-heidelberg/scientific-events-at-cos/cos-symposia/cos-symposium-2024

with @vincentflora, @NicoleDubilier, @GonzalezLab and many other great speakers

@biology #Evolution

Beautiful new study by Michael Bok, Macali & Garm on the high-resolution eyes of the enigmatic alciopid annelids, from Ponza island.
"Our results show that the eyes of alciopids possess the anatomical, morphological, and physiological properties requisite for high resolution tasks and object vision"
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.055
#annelid #Evolution #eye @biology @mikebok

We have now published a new and massively extended/reworked preprint of the whole-body #Platynereis larval #connectome with over 50 figures

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.17.585258v1

All the analyses, plots and figures should be reproducible in #rstats with the code provided:

https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10825370

@zenodo_org

by querying our public #CATMAID database:

https://catmaid.jekelylab.ex.ac.uk

#neuroscience @biology #volumeEM
@biorxivpreprint

Press release at @eLife of our paper exploring the mechanism of pressure sensing by UV light sensors in #Platynereis larvae

https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/5f58b93c/plankton-use-uv-light-sensors-to-detect-pressure-change-and-avoid-getting-swept-away

Luis Alberto Bezares Calderón et al. paper here:
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/94306

#neuroscience #cilia #zooplankton #science @biology

Interesting review by Maria Sachkova on the #ctenophore nervous system and the challenges of studying it.
https://doi.org/10.1111/ede.12472
#neuroscience @biology