Research Highlight

4th International Congress on Electron Tomography (4ICET)

Conference photo taken on the lawn of the Paradise Point Resort Conference Center in San Diego.

November 2006 — NCMIR organized and hosted the Fourth International Congress on Electron Tomography (ICET) in San Diego on November 5-8, 2006. Convened three times since 1997, this conference provides a forum for structural and cell biologists, materials and computational scientists, and others to exchange information about how electron tomography (ET) elucidates structure-function in cellular arrays and larger assemblies. The Congress organizers created a Gordon Conference-like atmosphere where 176 international researchers and leading ET developers freely engaged in discussions that are helping catalyze future developments in electron tomography.  Over the course of the conference several participants toured the NCMIR facilities at the University of California San Diego.

Over one hundred ET practitioners conveyed their research results in oral and poster sessions during the meeting.  Roughly three quarters of the presentations were in the form of posters. Oral presentations, on topics ranging from instruments to emerging technologies.

More than a dozen presentations involved NCMIR’s applications of ET to fundamental research questions as well as innovative efforts using novel ET instrumentation, specimen preparation, bioinformatics, telescience technologies, and cell-centered data management.  The 4ICET conference program with abstracts is available at http://4icet.org. Highlights of several NCMIR-based collaborations included:

  • How serial section electron tomography is being used to generate accurate 3-D reconstructions of the specialized nodes of Ranvier found in the ears of Barn Owl’s, a unique system for investigating the relationship between unique nodal structure and physiological function (Sosinsky et. al.).
  • Advantages of using electron-dense Quantum dots for higher-throughput analysis of protein-protein interactions in EM tomograms (Giepmans et. al).
  • How ET-based ultrastructural studies of rat forebrain are helping to reveal features associated with the architecture of the presynaptic active zone (Burette et. al). 
  • How fluorescent microscopy correlated with electron microscopy is helping to develop a better understanding of how viruses enter and assemble within host cells (Lannan et al).
  • Using intermediate voltage electron tomography to explore the atypical arrangement of mitochondria associated with the adherens complex located at the presynaptic membrane in the calyx of Held, one of the largest nerve terminals in the central nervous system (Perkins et. al.).
  • How new developments in NCMIR’s Telescience tools are enabling tomographers to take advantage of high-performance computing and Grid technologies for deriving 3D structural information with traditional electron tomography processes and algorithms (Lin et al.).
  • How correlated light and electron microscopy/tomography is revealing morphological changes in mitochondria during programmed cell death (Sun et. al.).
  • How NCMIR’s prototype knowledge representation system is enabling microscopists to uniformly annotate and query subcellular structures in tomographic reconstructions (Fong et. al.).

NCMIR posters presented at 4ICET:

Burette A, J Crum, M Martone, M Ellisman, and R Weinberg. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE PRESYNAPTIC ACTIVE ZONE.

Fong L, L Chen, R West, M Wong, S Lamont, A Gupta, M Martone. IMAGE ANNOTATION FOR ELECTRON TOMOGRAPHIC DATA

Giepmans B, Thomas Deerinck, Benjamin Smarr, Ying Jones, Shalini Ananda, John Crum, Gina Sosinsky & Mark Ellisman. QUANTUM DOTS FOR PROTEIN IDENTIFICATION IN LIGHT MICROSCOPY AND EM-TOMOGRAPHY

Jin L, M Ellisman, P Leblanc, F Duttweiler, J Bouwer, S Peltier, A-C Milazzo, N-H Xuong, S Kleinfelder, and S Li. A NEW DIRECT DETECTION DETECTOR FOR ELECTRON MICROSCOPY

Lanman J, J Crum, G Sosinsky, M Ellisman, A Schneemann, and JE Johnson. VISUALIZING THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL RELATIONSHIP OF VIRUS ENTRY AND ASSEMBLY IN CELLS.

Lin A, M Su, A Kulungowski, A Lathers, G Mehta, S Peltier, E Deelman, and M Ellisman. CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE FOR PARALLEL TOMOGRAPHIC RECONSTRUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

Perkins G, A White, J Brown, A Dixit, R Scott, R Wagner, I Wu, M Ellisman, G Spirou. ELECTRON TOMOGRAPHY REVEALS NOVEL FEATURES OF THE MITOCHONDRIAL ASSOCIATED ADHERENS COMPLEX.

Sargis J and M Martone. THE CELL CENTERED DATABASE - DEVELOPING SMART TOOLS TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO AND INTEGRATION AND ORGANIZATION OF A LIGHT AND ELECTRON MICROSCOPY DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.

Sosinsky G, M Tihova, Y-M Kim, T Deerinck, S Ghassemzadeh, C Carr, and M Ellisman. 3D ARCHITECTURE OF NUCLEAR LAMINARIS NODES OF RANVIER FROM THE AUDITORY SYSTEM OF THE BARN OWL.

Sun M, J Williams, D Green , G Perkins, J Brown, M Ellisman, and T Frey. CORRELATED LIGHT AND ELECTRON MICROSCOPY/TOMOGRAPHY REVEALS CHANGES IN MITOCHONDRIA DURING RELEASE OF CYTOCHROME. C.