Paul Verkade is Professor of Bioimaging at the University of Bristol

Letting the Biological Question Drive the Technology

The University Biosciences community enjoyed an inspiring talk by Paul Verkade, Professor of Bioimaging at the University of Bristol on 30th January at the Living Systems Institute.

The latest weekly University of Exeter Biosciences Seminar featured Professor Verkade who was welcomed by an audience of over 100 senior academics, post doc fellows, lab technicians and PhD students in the Living Systems Institute seminar space. Verkade outlined the very latest developments in the areas of Correlative Light Electron Microscopy (CLEM), the development of which he has pioneered. CLEM combines fluorescent light and electron microscopy, allowing the visualisation of dynamic cellular processes in vivo and high resolution imaging within the same sample.

Drawing from a large body of cutting edge, interdisciplinary work in this area Verkade highlighted recent technical advances in areas such as intracellular transport and synthetic biology. Given the wide range of CLEM approaches and applications his over-riding theme “Let the Biological Question Drive the Technology” provided a useful framework for understanding the exciting CLEM opportunities currently available to the scientific community.

As seminar host Dr Bertram Daum, LSI Senior Research Fellow commented: "The Biosciences Department at the University of Exeter and the Living Systems Institute were delighted to have the opportunity to host Paul last Thursday. CLEM is a very powerful and increasingly important bioimaging technique and Paul’s work has been instrumental to its development. The great interest in CLEM at Exeter was evident by the almost unprecedented attendance of his talk, which brought the LSI's seminar room to the limits of its capacity."

Date: 4 February 2020