Philipp Keller wants to uncover the fundamental rules governing neural development, and to systematically link development to the functional activation of circuits in the nervous system. Keller and his team design and apply new light-sheet microscopes and computer vision methods to quantitatively study development and the emergence of function in the early nervous system of the fruit fly, zebrafish, and mouse. The team’s long-term goals are to use their findings to establish and validate a computer model of the developing nervous system and, ultimately, of the entire embryo.
With the development of an adaptive, multi-view light sheet microscope and a suite of computational tools, researchers have captured the first view of early organ development inside the mouse embryo. Janelia scientists have developed the first adaptive light-sheet microscope — an instrument that continuously analyzes and adapts to dynamic changes in a specimen and thereby improves spatial resolution. Within less than a second, the new IsoView microscope produces images of entire organisms, such as a zebrafish or fruit fly embryo, with enough resolution in all three dimensions that each cell appears as a distinct structure. Fernando Amat, Philipp Keller, and William Lemon win first prize in the 2014 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition for their video that captures the early development of a fruit fly embryo. Janelia researchers develop a new computational method that can essentially automate much of the time-consuming process of reconstructing an animal’s developmental building plan cell by cell. A new imaging technology developed at Janelia lets users track each cell in an embryo as it takes shape over hours or days. Over the past year, two scientists who have been at Janelia since its opening took on new roles as group leaders, and six new fellows were recruited to head their own research groups.