An Interview with Steve Paddock
Nikon conducted this interview with Dr. Stephen W. Paddock when he was chosen as the MicroscopyU Featured Microscopist for Spring 2002. Interested visitors who visit the gallery are invited to contact Dr. Paddock via email with their own questions at: paddock@facstaff.wisc.edu
Meet Our Featured Microscopist
NIKON: Tell us about your background.
PADDOCK: I am from a small village in central England, near Leamington Spa. I received my undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Birmingham and my Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Bristol. I've been in the U.S. since my second post-doc, and have been a member of Sean Carroll's lab at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Wisconsin in Madison for the past decade.
NIKON: How did you get involved in photomicrography?
PADDOCK: My own early research was in sperm motility. I worked in labs in Edinburgh, Scotland and Bristol, England with David Woolley, a wonderful photomicrographer. Of course we shot images on film in his lab back then. I learned a lot from him. The images he taught me to capture had to be technically sound and have the best composition. He also taught me how to select images - how to pick exactly the right one from the many images we shot. After that, I was at the Strangeways Laboratory in Cambridge and the Biophysics Department at King's College in London, studying cell locomotion with Graham Dunn. We did a lot of time lapse recording of cell locomotion of living cells, first using 16mm film, and subsequently using video techniques. Both graduate and postdoctoral laboratories moved midway through my time there, and at least I became accomplished at moving microscopes! I did my second post-doc with Guenter Albrecht-Buehler at Northwestern University in Chicago where we recorded spinning nuclei using time-lapse video (with some image processing) and subsequent immunofluorescence or electron microscopy analysis on the same cells. All three of these mentors stressed the importance of capturing images that are both technically and artistically sound.
NIKON: What is your role in Sean Carroll's laboratory?
PADDOCK: Our lab works mostly on the development of butterflies and fruit flies, and involves looking for molecular clues to the evolutionary connection between different species. I handle the microscopy and digital imaging side of the enterprise, working with a continuous stream of fellow researchers that pass through the laboratory in the burgeoning "evo-devo" field. We aim to capture images of high quality that contain the most information, using traditional, confocal and also some electron microscopy.
NIKON: That role has changed a great deal, I guess, as the work has become more quantitative.
PADDOCK: We started looking at wing development in fruit flies, and wanted to study butterfly wings to learn more about the genetic regulatory mechanisms of both, and then of more distantly related insects. We see now that there are similar genes and similar regulatory pathways, and this gives us a handle on how these developmental pathways have evolved. It's true that for the last 10 years, we have been doing more cataloging of fixed and stained tissues at different stages of development. However, with improvements to the confocal microscope and the introduction of probes for gene expression in living cells, for example, GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein), we can image gene expression in vivo.
NIKON: What type of imaging do you perform most often?
PADDOCK: Mostly, I do fluorescence confocal microscopy work. When I first moved to Madison, I worked at the former Integrated Microscopy Facility, and we took delivery of one of the first laser scanning confocal microscopes in the USA. When I realized that one could optically section immunofluorescently-labeled tissues, I was hooked!
NIKON: How do you see the importance of your work?
PADDOCK: I sit at the cusp between the instrumentation and the biology itself. It's a fascinating place to work, especially with a biology background. Our body of knowledge is building, and we've had so many wonderful surprises over the years. The main one is that there are many genes involved in the developing insect wing that are similar to those that play roles in the development of vertebrate limbs. A lot of fruit fly work is applicable to studies of cancer and other disease states. On a more technical level, we are constantly improving and developing our protocols including those for collecting and presenting the images in novel and aesthetically appealing ways.
NIKON: What's some of the fun stuff you do?
PADDOCK: Over the years we have produced several digital videos of series of confocal images and set them to rock music. Such titles as "Little Wing" and "Learning to Fly" have illuminated insect wing development and "Living in the Past" has become an evo/devo hit. I believe that such video sequences draw young people to the field and make for both memorable and entertaining conclusions to talks.
NIKON: Can you give us an example of images you particularly like?
PADDOCK: I especially like the Triple-Labeled Fruit Fly Embryo because it was one of the first we produced using the confocal microscope in Sean's lab. The combination of colors gives a snapshot of development right there in the image. It took a lot of work to produce the image at the time, and now, the technique is a relatively routine one. Also, the image of a Developing Butterfly Wing is a simple way of looking at the 3D structure of tissues. The emerging scales appear in red at a different level in the epithelium from the epithelial nuclei in green. This fascinating result is actually relatively easy to do by pasting confocal images into different channels in Photoshop. Finally, I like the Nikon Competition winner Fruit Fly Third Instar Wing Imaginal Disc.
We invite you to enjoy Paddock's keen insight into the invisible world of photography through the microscope by visiting his Featured Microscopist digital image gallery.
