General Biology Seminar
Roots and their interactions with soil and microorganisms are important in nutrient uptake and disease transmission, but techniques for observing soil biological organisms in situ are lacking. In this talk, I will present new approaches developed in my lab to observe, image and characterize roots and microorganisms live an in situ. For example, we have developed a new substrate termed transparent soil that can combines complex soil-like environment and the capabilities of imaging biological processes at different scales, resolutions and throughput rates using modern microscopy techniques. We have developed numerous imaging and image analysis techniques based on Optical Projection Tomography (OPT), Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM), Light Sheet Tomography (LST) and Biospeckle Imaging to quantify biological activity in these soils. Applications of these methods include root biology, crop genetics and soil microbiology.