Tuesday 4 December 2012

Leeds Imaging and Flow Cytometry Day 2012

We held our second flow cytometry technology day at the University of Leeds on Friday 23rd November, this year we extended it to include high resolution imaging this year to reflect the establishment and work being carried out in the new Imaging Facility in LIMM at the St James' Teaching Hospital site.

The day began with an introduction to flow cytometry presented by Dr Beverly Cork of Life Technologies and was followed by Dr Gina Scott from the St James' site on the use of flow cytometry in following NK cell fate and function. Dr Morgan Blaylock of Becton Dickinson presented the new FACSJazz cell sorter, an instrument designed to fit into labs and perform routine sorting tasks. It also fits into a standard Cat II hood to allow sterile sorting to be performed. The morning session was then wrapped up with the first talk incorporating confocal imaging by Ms Abbie Nelson who showed great images of NK cells and the formation of lytic granules acquired on the Nikon A1R confocal.
Dr Bev Cork of Life Technologies presenting an  introduction to flow cytometry in the morning session.

After a buffet lunch kindly provided by our sponsors (who hopefully had lots of interest from the delegates!) we had a session on high resolution imaging from speakers based on main campus with the Faculty of Biological Sciences (FBS). The session however was kicked off by Dr Chris Power from Zeiss who presented an overview of optical microscopy techniques. Additionally he introduced a recently developed technology referred to as light sheet microscopy (SPIM). With this technology fantastic images of developing embryos can be acquired super fast in 3D and is being utilised in the study of gene expression in the developing drosophilla embryo. Subsequent talks covered an array of subject areas from the role of SNARE proteins in NK cell cytotoxicity (Dr Andrew Hellewell, FBS), to prion proteins in Alzheimer's disease (Dr Heledd Griffiths). Prof Jurgen Deneke (School of Biology, FBS) presented the talk of the day on image selection and statistical analysis of colocalization; making a talk on statistics entertaining!!

Prof Jurgen Deneke (School of Biology, FBS, University of Leeds) presenting a talk on image selection and analysis of confocal data.
Perusing the kind sponsor's stalls during the break!
Our final session had presentations on 'new technologies' and covered developments in mass cytometry, high throughput flow cytometry, multiparameter imaging and super resolution microscopy. Dr Jane Limer of DVS Sciences presented a new generation cytometer called CyTOF which combines the single cell analysis of a flow cytometer but extends the potential number of marker detectable to nearly a 100 in a single sample! Wow, amazing stuff!! Dr Erika Wilson (LIMM) presented data that her group have acquired using LyoScreen plates from BD Biosciences to investigate the surface antigens on cancer related immune cells. We were presented with some fantastic images of in vivo angiogenesis by Dr Kathryn McMahon (LIMM) who uses confocal imaging and tiling to acquire large areas of fluorescently labelled mouse retina. Finally, the meeting was wrapped up by Dr Dmitry Ushakov from Prof Michelle Peckham's lab in FBS presented the recent development of PALM and STORM within the Faculty.

Cheese and wine (and chips!) for the end of day delegates!
To finish off I just want to give a huge THANKS to the kind sponsors who made this event such a success. Onward now to 2013..!

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