Flamingo: Development, applications, and dissemination of light sheet microscopy technology

Abstract:

The overall goal of the Huisken Lab is to systematically study developmental processes in living organisms using custom, non-invasive biomedical imaging techniques. Over the years, we have developed and perfected imaging tools that offer unique possibilities for analyzing vertebrate development. Our primary tool is advanced, customized light sheet microscopy (LSFM, SPIM), ideal for imaging biological samples across scales, from small, living organisms to large, fixed, and cleared tissues. Besides the low photo-toxicity and fast acquisition, LSFM offers the advantage of high scalability and customizability: the experimental setup can be optimized for the given sample, which is often crucial to a successful experiment. We have now developed a modular and portable light sheet microscope framework (Flamingo) to streamline this process. Several geometries for various samples have already been realized, and more are to come. The microscope is modular and portable, opening many new opportunities for collaborations, fieldwork in remote areas, teaching, training, and, generally, sharing with other scientists. Despite the instrument's portability, it constitutes a high-end light sheet microscope that we use in the lab and can hopefully unlock many new and exciting imaging experiments in other labs. The entire Flamingo setup fits in two roller cases and can be moved from lab to lab, packed in the trunk of a car, and shipped over long distances. On the one hand, Flamingo makes light sheet microscopy more accessible to biologists; on the other hand, we benefit by learning about exciting new imaging projects, getting access to new specimens, and integrating user feedback in the next iteration of these instruments. Flamingos can also be remotely controlled, offering the option for support and collaborative experiments from afar.

Biography:

Jan Huisken is an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. Jan studied physics in Göttingen and Heidelberg and has a background in three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy, optical manipulation and trapping, developmental biology, and zebrafish development. He received his PhD from the EMBL Heidelberg, where he pioneered multidimensional light sheet microscopy (also Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy, SPIM) in the labs of Ernst Stelzer and Joachim Wittbrodt. For one of the first applications of light sheet microscopy, Huisken moved to the lab of Didier Stainier at the University of California San Francisco as a cross-disciplinary HFSP postdoctoral fellow in 2005 to study cardiovascular morphogenesis and function in zebrafish. From 2010, Huisken was an independent group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany.  From 2016, he was a principal investigator and director of Medical Engineering at the Morgridge Institute for Research and a Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Since 2021, he has been an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. Huisken is best known for his interdisciplinary work at the interface of gentle high-resolution microscopy and quantitative developmental biology. Huisken was awarded the Royal Microscopy Society Medal for Light Microscopy in 2017, the Lennart Nilsson Award in 2020, and the Humboldt-Professorship in 2021.