Meeting report – Imaging the Cell

Abstract

Every two years, the French Society for Cell Biology (SBCF) organises an international meeting called 'Imaging the Cell'. This year, the 8th edition was held on 24-26 June 2015 at University of Bordeaux Campus Victoire in the city of Bordeaux, France, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Over the course of three days, the meeting provided a forum for experts in different areas of cell imaging. Its unique approach was to combine conventional oral presentations during morning sessions with practical workshops at hosting institutes and the Bordeaux Imaging Center during the afternoons. The meeting, co-organised by Violaine Moreau and Fredeŕic Saltel (both INSERM U1053, Bordeaux, France), Christel Poujol and Fabrice Cordelieres (both Bordeaux Imaging Center, Bordeaux, France) and Isabelle Sagot (Institut de Biochimie et Geńetique Cellulaires, Bordeaux, France), brought together about 120 scientists including 16 outstanding speakers to discuss the latest advances in cell imaging. Thanks to recent progress in imaging technologies, cell biologists are now able to visualise, follow and manipulate cellular processes with unprecedented accuracy. The meeting sessions and workshops highlighted some of the most exciting developments in the field, with sessions dedicated to optogenetics, high-content screening, in vivo and live-cell imaging, correlative light and electron microscopy, as well as super-resolution imaging.Optogenetics -from cell to subcellular stimulation Before the start of the scientific part of the meeting, the conference opened on Wednesday morning with a brief presentation of the French Society for Cell Biology (www.sbcf.fr) by Jacky Goetz (INSERM U1109, Strasbourg, France), who has recently been elected to the SBCF council. It was followed by an introduction to the France-BioImaging infrastructure provided by Jean Salamero (Institut Curie, Paris, France). France-BioImaging is a French consortium to gather resources in cell and tissue imaging as part of the Euro-BioImaging initiative (http://www.eurobioimaging.eu/). After these introductions, optogenetics was the focus of the remainder of the session. Optogenetics uses light to control genetically modified cells by means of expressing light-sensitive proteins. This innovative technique was first developed to trigger and monitor the activities of individual neurons. Improvement of the spatio-temporal control of light stimulation allows to photoactivate neural circuits in patterns that mimic physiological processes. Claire Wyart (Neuroscience School of Paris, ENP, Paris, France) explained how she makes use of this sophisticated technique to reconstruct the connectivity map of sensory neurons that are involved in locomotion in the intact zebrafish (Fig. 1A). By using this approach, she was able to describe the sensorimotor integration in the vertebrate spinal cord, a work that opened new avenues for innovative neuromodulation strategies, in particular after spinal cord injury (Knafo and Wyart, 2015). Recently, optogenetics has been extended to the subcellular...