Editorial

Welcome to the first of the 2018 issues of Microbiology Today. In this February edition we are going to take a closer look (no pun intended) at one of my favourite techniques in microbiology: imaging. Initially established by some of the best known names in microbiology, such as Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, advances in microscopy and associated techniques, such as fixing and staining, now provide us with the opportunity to see what is going on within the invisible world that we work with. In this issue, the authors discuss a series of specialisms in the field of imaging and explain how visual cues can fundamentally change our understanding of our own research.

We start off with a fascinating article from Pippa Hawes, who gives a view of microscopy and its use to enhance our knowledge of some of the most devastating livestock diseases found across the globe. She explains how microscopy can help advance developments of new antiviral treatments and describes some of the complications encountered when using microscopy to observe microbes that require high containment facilities. 

Next Chris Bartlett discusses super resolution microscopy, giving us the ins and outs of photo-activated localisation microscopy and stochastic-optical reconstruction microscopy, and how these imaging techniques can provide new information for the researcher. This is especially true in the case of viral biology, where comprehensive information provided by these methods allow access to information at a scale far below the scope of conventional microscopy. Research into hepatitis C is given as an example of the work being undertaken with these techniques, revealing just what types of information can be gained.

Moving on, we come to the use of glowing microbes and how they can be used to provide a new perspective on how bacteria organise themselves. Jessica Mark Welch paints a picture of how, by using fluorescent tags, we can explore the localisation, structure and organisation of bacteria within communities, and how this might impact our understanding of the role of microbes in health and disease.

Gail McConnell, Brad Amos and Liam Rooney are up next discussing the Mesolens, a new type of microscope which has been developed to enhance resolution. This microscope takes a step away from the traditional model, with a new design harnessing both high resolution and a wide field of view. This new, wider outlook can help capture large fields of view at high resolution. In doing so it can be used for observing a variety of different biological situations, for example, large-scale spatial arrangements between bacteria, pin-pointing rare events and highlighting biological patterns. 

Then, providing insight on microscopy and its use in neuroscience, Michele Darrow and Karen Marshall outline how microscopy can used in the case of protein misfolding diseases such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer's. Imaging can help researchers better understand how misfolded proteins cause cellular disturbances, with cryogenic electron microscopy giving detailed images for analysis. Michele and Karen address, how, once you have the images, someone needs to consider what they show, and they explain how they are engaging with citizen science to try and speed up the analysis of large, complex data.

Our Comment piece has been provided by Bruno Martins and James Locke, and takes us into the world of movies, where dynamic processes can be captured through time-lapse imaging. The article gives a perspective on how you can go about making these types of film, the benefits of investigating single cells and how advances in technology mean microfluidic chips can allow us to see how microbes respond to environmental changes in real time. 

Rowena Jenkins

Editor
[email protected]

Image: Coloured scanning electron micrograph of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (round) on the surface of small intestine villi. Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science Photo Library.