Roslin Scientist honoured in Nikon Small World in Motion competition
This year's third place for the Nikon Small World in Motion competition went to Dr. Nils Lindstrom, from the Hohenstein laboratory in The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, for his time-lapse movie showing a transgenic kidney growing in vitro.
This year's third place for the Nikon Small World in Motion competition went to Dr. Nils Lindstrom, from the Hohenstein laboratory in The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, for his time-lapse movie showing a transgenic kidney growing in vitro.
Lindstrom's movie shows how an embryonic kidney grows over four days. It was chosen because it effectively illustrates just how quickly a high degree of complexity is formed over a relatively short time.
Time-lapse microscopy is not limited to kidneys and Lindstrom has cultured a range of embryonic tissues in vitro.
Lindstrom is a developmental biologist with a strong interest in the generation and use of transgenic mouse models. As part of a project funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to reduce the number of animals needed for complex genetic experiments, Lindstrom and Hohenstein use time-lapse microscopy to significantly increase the data collected from each embryo whilst simultaneously reducing the number of animals needed.
Using time-lapse makes sense because they no longer require multiple embryos at different stages but can instead follow one embryo through a series of developmental time-points. Moreover, by adding the time dimension to the analysis of organ development, new and important insights can be obtained, as Lindstrom recently has done for the patterning of the nephron.
Time-lapse microscopy is not limited to kidneys and Lindstrom has cultured a range of embryonic tissues in vitro. The Hohenstein Group has recently moved from the MRC Human Genetics Unit to The Roslin Institute, which receives strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council, and they are excited by the prospects of developing new collaborations that utilise this imaging system.