Fast imaging of millimeter-scale areas with beam deflection transmission electron microscopy.

Serial section transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has proven to be one of the leading methods for millimeter-scale 3D imaging of brain tissues at nanoscale resolution. It is important to further improve imaging efficiency to acquire larger and more brain volumes. We report here a threefold increase in the speed of TEM by using a beam deflecting mechanism to enable highly efficient acquisition of multiple image tiles (nine) for each motion of the mechanical stage.

A comparative study of bronchodilator response: utilizing pre-bronchodilator versus predicted normal values.

Background: A positive bronchodilator response has been defined as a 12% increase in the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV) or forced vital capacity (FVC) from their respective pre-bronchodilator values, combined with at least a 0.2 L absolute change. Recent recommendations suggested the use of the percent change in FEV and FVC relative to their predicted normal values without having applied them in patients with airflow obstruction.

Connecting single-cell transcriptomes to projectomes in mouse visual cortex.

The mammalian brain is composed of diverse neuron types that play different functional roles. Recent single-cell RNA sequencing approaches have led to a whole brain taxonomy of transcriptomically-defined cell types, yet cell type definitions that include multiple cellular properties can offer additional insights into a neuron's role in brain circuits. While the Patch-seq method can investigate how transcriptomic properties relate to the local morphological and electrophysiological properties of cell types, linking transcriptomic identities to long-range projections is a major unresolved challenge.

Sequential Chromogenic IHC: Spatial Analysis of Lymph Nodes Identifies Contact Interactions between Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells and Plasmablasts.

Unlabelled: Recent clinical observations have emphasized the critical role that the spatial organization of immune cells in lymphoid structures plays in the success of cancer immunotherapy and patient survival. However, implementing sequential chromogenic IHC (scIHC) to analyze multiple biomarkers on a single tissue section has been limited because of a lack of a standardized, rigorous guide to the development of customized biomarker panels and a need for user-friendly analysis pipelines that can extract meaningful data. In this context, we provide a comprehensive guide for the development of novel biomarker panels for scIHC, using practical examples and illustrations to highlight the most common complications that can arise during the setup of a new biomarker panel, and provide detailed instructions on how to prevent and detect cross-reactivity between secondary reagents and carryover between detection antibodies.

Lower respiratory tract microbiome composition and community interactions in smokers.

The lung microbiome impacts on lung function, making any smoking-induced changes in the lung microbiome potentially significant. The complex co-occurrence and co-avoidance patterns between the bacterial taxa in the lower respiratory tract (LRT) microbiome were explored for a cohort of active (AS), former (FS) and never (NS) smokers. Bronchoalveolar lavages (BALs) were collected from 55 volunteer subjects (9 NS, 24 FS and 22 AS).