Sundews need to be very sensitive to touch, to recognize when their prey has been captured.
This project was a great collaboration with Carl Procko from @salkinstitute.bsky.social. Videos were captured with the THUNDER Imager Model Organism dissecting scope from @leicamicrosystems.bsky.social

These sundews (Drosera spatulata) plants are expressing a cytosolic calcium biosensor. The video is false-colored, where the color corresponds to the calcium concentration in the cytosol of the cells. Blue = lowest, green = medium, and yellow = highest calcium levels
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2206433119

Do you know what happens when you touch a carnivorous sundew plant?
If the touch is strong and large enough, a cytosolic calcium wave will spread from the site of touch throughout the whole plant, but if you only touch one tentacle (see post below), the calcium wave will be local and less intense.

The video shows the 3D reconstruction of the Z-stack (the image above is Z-maximum projection), and it's clear that the small green plastids are on the surface of the tissue, while the larger magenta ones are deeper in the tissue.
Here we imaged the bottom side of the Arabidopsis thaliana leaf.

I think our Chlamy culture is haunted 😱👻😅

This is a Z-stack through a chloroplast from a single Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cell. Signal = chlorophyll autofluorescence. The image was captured on AXR confocal from @healthcare.nikon.com with 100x/1.4 oil objective
#cellbiology #algae #microscopymonday

This is a deconvolved maximum Z projection image made on an Evident/Olympus FV3000 confocal microscope using a 60x/1.2 water objective.
And as a bonus, here is a 3D rendering of that Z-stack #3Dvolume