Vertical-stage confocal microscopy for live imaging of growing plants

正如所有的园丁都知道的那样，植物的根垂直向下生长，它们通过响应重力来做到这一点。了解这是如何发生的，根系如何发育并对环境做出反应，对于改善植物的营养和水分吸收至关重要，这将最终帮助我们提高农业生产力，养活世界。植物的生长和发育是一个复杂的过程，受细胞内多种蛋白质和其他分子的调控。了解这些蛋白质通常在细胞中的位置，以及它们在正常发育过程中或响应环境刺激时如何在细胞内移动，是了解调节植物生长反应的分子途径的重要第一步，显微镜是用于研究的常用工具。然而，大多数显微镜只配备了一个水平的阶段，这意味着植物不能在其自然的垂直方向成像。由于植物会对重力做出反应，因此将它们水平放置会扰乱它们的正常行为，因此很难就植物对重力的正常反应得出有效的结论。新的水平安装共聚焦显微镜将使我们能够首次使用强大的共聚焦显微镜以高分辨率（精细细节）在自然方向上对垂直植物根部进行成像。这种尖端的垂直显微镜将使我们能够在细胞内对蛋白质和其他分子的天然方向进行成像，并允许对这些分子响应不同环境信号以及在生长和发育过程中的运动进行动态实时成像。

As all gardeners know, plant roots grow vertically downwards, and they do this by responding to gravity. Understanding how this happens, how roots develop and respond to their environment is essential to improving nutrient and water uptake in plants, which will ultimately help us improve agricultural productivity to feed the world. Plant growth and development are complex processes that are regulated by several proteins and other molecules within cells. Understanding where in the cells these proteins normally reside, and how they move within cells either during normal developmental processes or in response to environmental stimuli is an important first step in understanding the molecular pathways that regulate plant growth responses, and microscopy is a common tool used to study this. However, most microscopes are only equipped with a horizontal stage, which means that plants cannot be imaged in their natural vertical orientiation. As plants respond to gravity, placing them in a horizontal orientation perturbs their normal behaviour, making it difficult to draw valid conclusions about the normal plant response to gravity. The new horizontally-mounted confocal microscope will allow us, for the first time, to use powerful confocal microscopy to image vertical plant roots in their natural orientation at high resolution (with fine detail). This cutting edge vertical microscope will enable us to image proteins and other molecules in their native orientation within cells, as well as allow the dynamic live imaging of movement of these molecules in response to different environmental signals and during growth and development.