SEM taken by UMaine grad student on cover of microbiology textbook
A scanning electron micrograph taken by University of Maine alumna Charlotte Royer is featured on the cover of the textbook, “Microbiology: An Evolving Science, Fifth Edition,” published in 2020 by W.W. Norton and Company.
Royer took the image in 2018 when she was a master’s student in marine sciences advised by UMaine professor of plant biology and marine sciences Susan Brawley. Brawley credits Kelly Edwards with training Royer on the use of the scanning electron microscope. Edwards, electron microscopy lab manager in the School of Biology and Ecology, is now retired from UMaine.
The textbook authors discovered the image when it was included as a figure in a publication by Royer, Brawley and Nicolas Blouin in “Botanica Marina” in 2018.
Blouin earned his doctorate at UMaine with Brawley, and is now a senior research scientist and CORE associate director in the department of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming. Royer is a research assistant in the department of neurosciences at The Ohio State University.
The cover image, which was colorized by Norton, shows microbial colonization on the blade margins of the marine macroalga Porphyra umbilicalis, collected from the cultured descendant of a wild sample originally harvested in Lubec, Maine.
Contact: Joan Perkins, joan.perkins@maine.edu