Advanced Microscopy
Microbial Ecology
Plant Cell Biology
Volume Electron Microscopy
I am particularly passionate about the ongoing electron microscopy (EM) renaissance we are living through, thanks to recent advances in volume and cryo EM techniques and the rapid improvement of deep learning networks to segment and analyze complex, massive, or low signal:noise datasets.
I hope to be part of this movement and am actively seeking both training and employment opportunities in the field.
Below, I showcase the cell biology of a Cannabis sativa glandular trichome secretory disk cell, collected from high-pressure frozen resin-embedded samples, and processed in a Gallium Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscope (FIB-SEM).
This dataset displays the beauty of the interconnect endoplasmic reticulum (ER) “highway”, and the ubiquitous membrane contact sites between ER-leucoplasts, ER-mitochondria, and ER-plasma membrane, hypothesized to facilitate the trafficking of terpenophenolic metabolites. Further, we observe only a handful of highly connected and stromulated leucoplasts, challenging our prior understanding of trichome cell biology, including plastid morphology and interconnectivity.
All of these inferences were only possible due to vEM.
More about
Reilly
I LOVE the ocean and all of its beautiful and bizarre biodiversity. I am particularly interested in complex cases of symbiosis, particularly involving Protists. I have an Associate of Science: Biology with Distinction from Langara College (Vancouver), and a Bachelor of Science: in Honours Biology with Distinction from The University of British Columbia (UBC) and am working on my Master of Science focused on plant cell and molecular biology. I have over 4 years of research experience in areas including advanced volume microscopy and microbial ecology, with projects ranging from the tree of life and plant ultrastructure to the transformation of Cannabis sativa, bioinformatic analyses of the microbiome in disease states, and advanced microscopy such as FIBSEM, cryoSEM, and multiphoton confocal. Check out my CV or reach out to learn more!
