Written by Nóra Lehotai. Pictures by Linda Sandblad.
The first course by MIMS in the frame of the NordForsk grant was held in Umeå in December 2022 under the lead of UCEM and BICU, two imaging facilities at Umeå University.
The Swedish node of the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine, MIMS, held its first course in Umeå in the frame of the ”NordForsk: Nordic EMBL Partnership Hub” grant during 5-8 December 2022. Two state-of-the-art imaging facilities at Umeå University; Umeå Centre for Electron Microscopy (UCEM) and Biochemical Imaging Centre Umeå (BICU), were the drivers of the workshop where participants could learn about advanced correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) methods.
Picture: CLEM workshop participants and teachers having lunch break together at Umeå University.
The workshop aimed at providing knowledge not only in the forms of theoretical lectures but also as hands-on practical sessions for techniques such as in-resin preserved fluorescence for CLEM, Tokuyasu ultramicrotome sectioning combined with staining techniques on sections, cryo-CLEM and cryo-FIB milling.
From the sixteen workshop participants, seven travelled from Denmark, two from Finland, one from outside of the Nordic countries and six were from Umeå University. Alongside the students, staff of UCEM and BICU, furthermore, five invited speakers enriched the 2 days-programme:
- Prof. Eija Jokitalo, adjunct professor and research director of the EM-unit at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki,
- Bettina Zens, PhD student in the Schur lab at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria,
- Dr. Perrine Paul-Gilloteaux, research engineer, Nantes Université, CNRS,
- Dr. Marianne Sandvold Beckwith, EIPOD postdoctoral fellow at EMBL, and
- Dr. Jae Yang, scientist at the UW-Medison Cryo-EM Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (joined online).
The participants talked very positively about the workshop, what they learned there, and how they had fun during the joint dinner combined with games such as bowling and shuffleboard.
Pictures: Hands-on learning in the frame of the CLEM workshop at the Umeå Centre for Electron Microscopy (UCEM) facility at Umeå University.
The “Workshop on Advanced Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy (CLEM) methods", 5-8 December 2022, was developed by Naga Venkata Gayathri Vegesna, senior research engineer at the Department of Integrative Medical Biology (IMB), first research engineer for correlative imaging at UCEM, and facilitated by MIMS with the help of Dominik Fischer, Science Manager at MIMS.
Useful links:
Learn more about the NordForsk: Nordic EMBL Partnership Hub courses by the Nordic EMBL Partnership: https://projects.au.dk/nordic-embl-partnership/collaborations/nordforsk-nordic-embl-partnership-hub/
Learn more about Biochemical Imaging Centre Umeå (BICU): https://www.umu.se/en/research/infrastructure/biochemical-imaging-centre-umea-bicu/
Learn more about Umeå Centre for Electron Microscopy (UCEM): https://www.umu.se/en/research/infrastructure/umea-centre-for-electron-microscopy-ucem/
