Muller glia (green) regulate local retinoic acid signalling to specialise photoreceptor outer segments (magenta)for high acuity visual function
Excited to share our new manuscript from the Yoshimatsu and MacDonald labs. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... We found that my favourite glial cells can regulate local retinoic acid signalling to specialise cone photoreceptors for high acuity visual function.
Happy to see how our collab. paper on the origin of the vertebrate eye is tickling the public interest. Our ongoing shuffle from systems neuro to evo-neuro over recent years continues to be a delight! We are supported by various funders, but I want to point out one in particular: @leverhulme.ac.uk
Happy to share our preprint on ephaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons in Drosophila by Lydia Ellison.
doi.org/10.64898/202...
We set out to see how near-instantaneous electrical interactions are good for processing tiny odour onset delays, only to find that they weren't.
💎 New Publication Alert: Next-Generation Calibration Materials
We propose fluorescent nanodiamonds as a superior alternative to standard beads for calibrating two-photon systems.
Check out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#Microscopy #Science #Innovation #Photonics #AcademicPublishing
10/10 Big thanks to all co-authors for the teamwork on this study @neurofishh.bsky.social, @mforst.bsky.social, Jakub Czubek and Malgorzata Szczerska
Funding support from @wellcometrust.bsky.social, @erc.europa.eu, @ukri.org, @hfspo.bsky.social, @leverhulme.ac.uk and Gdansk University of Technology
9/10 Take-home:
Nanodiamond phantoms provide photostable, tissue-relevant, and reproducible PSF calibration, enabling meaningful cross-platform comparison in two-photon microscopy.
We currently have a limited number of samples available. Feel free to contact me (DMs or email).
8/10 Nanodiamonds exhibit stable two-photon fluorescence across excitation wavelengths from 800 to 1040 nm, confirming efficient and broadband excitation suitable for multi-wavelength imaging.
7/10 With increasing two-photon excitation power, fluorescent beads show saturation and shape distortion, while nanodiamonds maintain stable morphology and consistent FWHM values, demonstrating resistance to saturation and photobleaching.
6/10 PSFs broaden significantly between shallow (~50 µm) and deep (~700 µm) imaging depths in nanodiamond phantoms, mirroring depth-dependent degradation observed in vivo and contrasting with agarose phantoms.
5/10 Refractive index measurements at 589 nm and 1050 nm show that nanodiamond phantoms align closely with RI estimates from brain tissue across common neuroscience model organisms, unlike water or agarose.
4/10 Compared to agarose–bead phantoms, nanodiamond phantoms exhibit optical scattering and structural heterogeneity that more closely resemble real brain tissue.
3/10 Two-photon PSFs measured with nanodiamonds and fluorescent beads are statistically indistinguishable in both diffraction-limited and non-telecentric (nTC) configurations.
2/10 SEM reveals heterogeneous nanodiamond aggregates with a substantial fraction below 200 nm, comparable to standard fluorescent beads.
Confocal stacks show bright punctate emitters throughout the gel, confirming fluorescence is intrinsic to nanodiamonds (NV centres).
1/10 New preprint on bioRxiv
Nanodiamonds for spatial resolution benchmarking in two-photon microscopy
We introduce nanodiamond-based phantoms as a robust, reusable alternative to bead–agarose samples for PSF calibration.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A new version of our 2p mesoscope paper is up on biorxiv:
Yang et al, Ultra-wide-field, deep, adaptive two-photon microscopy.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
"These results show that spontaneous activity in the vertebrate brain is highly stereotyped at the level of functional cell assemblies and can be reliably captured through a common latent code."
New work from Volker Bormuth Lab @sorbonne-universite.fr 🐟🧠
