Towards a mechanistic understanding of motile and primary cilia with CLEM and cryo-electron tomography and expansion microscopy

In this talk I will show how the power of modern electron microscopy (EM) techniques, coupled with light microscopy and expansion methods, can open a window to the molecular dynamics of cells, enabling us to discover details about cellular processes at unprecedented level of detail. More concretely, I will show how we have used time resolved correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM), cryo-FIB-SEM/cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and expansion microscopy (U-ExM) paired with confocal fluorescence microscopy, TIRF microscopy and mechanical manipulations of cells to study a number of essential molecular processes in motile and primary cilia, i.e. conserved organelles that are fundamental for most eukaryotic cells. While our own work focuses on the inner workings of cilia, many open questions in cell and molecular biology can be addressed by combining modern imaging methods and methods from cell biology in suitable ways.