Kristina:
   It took more than 10 years, but our study on validating antibodies for AT (and for postembedding immunolabeling in general) is finally out! Including a long list of antibodies that we tested for AT - both the ones that worked and the ones that didn't.

Martina:
   We developed a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of AT and ET (electron tomography). Thanks so much to our collaborators for making this possible! Check out our preprint to find out which role a marker pen (“edding”) plays in this approach that we call ‘ATUM-Tomo’:

Kristina:
   Emails, zoom calls, twitter, slack, gather town… - most of us had already met each other one way or another. But meeting in person was so much better! There were the obvious inconsequential things we had missed in our online interactions (“I didn’t realize you were so tall!”), but way more important was the full human presence, as online media can still convey only small fragments of it. The conference was superbly organized, I learned a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed it throughout!
   Some observations: the most popular organelle highlighted in quite a few talks was the cilium (I can’t resist taking pictures of it either), followed closely by mitochondria! And, I have to admit, I didn’t know that mitochondria can also be found in some dendritic spines of neurons, even though I’ve been working with spines for ages now.
   As for array tomography, we had a good showing! About a quarter of the talks had AT in one form or another. It was interesting that molecular information, when available, was often obtained before embedding and sectioning (pre-embedding). As far as I remember, only one talk (mine) had the classical post-embedding AT immunolabeling. Which makes me think that a combination of pre-embedding for some antibodies and post-embedding for others, may turn out to be the most flexible and convenient approach. There are a few proteins where all the antibodies that I’ve tested refuse to work on resin sections – it is about time to try pre-embedding for these targets.
   There were many new cool things that we heard and saw. But I was surprised at how many already published works I had missed. Here are several on sample preparation and sectioning:

Mark:
   I enjoyed meeting many people for the first time. Although zoom is great, it is nothing compared to in person! So it was very good to meet Naomi and Jemima from our AT group.  I met several people that I knew only from the literature, and met several promising young people and some useful commercial vendors.  Half or more of the people at the meeting were from Europe - there is a lot happening there!
  It was useful for me to get exposed to widely used software like webknossos, napari, microscopy image browser, empanada, etc. Although I have my own (imperfect) solutions to handling big data, it's great to know that there are alternatives are constantly being developed. 
   I saw lots of impressive computer simulations but I came away with the general impression that there are lots of things to be discovered in biology by volume EM!  Fib-SEM is moving forward fast, and it is the method of choice for certain kinds of subjects / problems.  But I also came away with the conviction that array tomography / ATUM tape collector has its place.  The capabilities for re-imaging and localization of molecules are big advantages. 
   As for work that we can mention, I had a nice talk with Xiaomeng Han from the Lichtman lab about preserving extracellular space in the brain, and pre-embedding labeling of brain with single chain antibodies: 

Martina:
   Our study on the correlation of Spatial Transcriptomics and AT is online: rdcu.be/dgAIU
Grateful for a great collaborative effort!

Martina:
   Announcing our CZI AT initiative at ELMI 2023 in Noordwijkerhout. Hope to infect the light microscopy and CLEM community with AT!

Martina:
   Glad to be part of the latest Methods in Cell Biology edition on volume EM. Check out our chapter on ATUM, where we review this approach, provide a step-by-step protocol and show its application for imaging amyloid plaques in an Alzheimer's mouse model.