2019 – Page 2 – The Live Cell Imaging facility

Deep red fluorescent proteins

The microscopy field is moving away from blue dyes. This is because red light, used to excited far red and deep red fluorophores, is less damaging to live cells than near UV light which is used to excite blue fluorophores.

On top of that, red light penetrates deeper into thick samples.

So as the trend in microscopy is to move to thicker samples and use more live samples, far red and deep red fluorophores are becoming more attractive.

Here is an article describing 3 new fluorescent protein in the far red to deep red range. One can excite them with 640 nm or a 685 nm lasers or LEDs.

EMBL microscopy event in Göteborg

Nice speaker line up at this 1 day event on the 18th of october.

Organized by Astra Zeneca, EMBL and several Swedish universities, this is a good mingling event for microscopists! 😀

Microscopy job in beautiful Singapore!

Anyone feeling like working in Singapore? Here is your chance! 😁

Crest V3 spinning disk confocal demo

Tomorrow (17 sept) we will enjoy a seminar and a live demo about the Crest V3 spinning disk confocal which is being set up at our facility as I write! 😀

Very cool confocal!

enormous field of view (32 mm diameter)
fully confocal
can image at 100 frames per sec
spits out Nyquist resolution with the 60x objective!

You can come to the seminar (at 10 in the Gene seminar room at the LCI facility) or listen to it remotely (see here how to follow the LCI webinars).

You can even book a private demo to image your own samples.

Matching the refraction index of live samples

To image a thick sample, it is crucial to match the refraction index of the sample with that of the immersion medium between the sample and the objective. Typically, life samples are in an aqueous solution like culture medium which has a refraction index of 1.33. Unfortunately organoids often have a higher refraction index closer to 1.44 therefore as one images deeper into the organoids, light scatters due to the refraction index mismatch and the images become blurry.

This paper presents a product that has a high RI and is compatible with cell culture. Good to keep in mind for those who image organoids over time.

How to identify cells and nuclei in an image?

NucleAlzer is a great new deep learning tool to identify roundish objects like nuclei and cells in fluorescent or bright field images.

To test if the tool works for you before you download it, you can simply upload one of your images and check the result. Easy! 😀

Call4Help: fast-track help with your image analysis project!

BII (BioImage Informatics, the great image analysis at SciLife Uppsala) and the LCI facility will run a new Call4Help on the 4th of September.

Anyone who is stuck with image analysis and wishes for quick help to build a pipeline should apply. You don’t have to acquire the images at the LCI. Anyone can apply.

How does it work? You first upload your images and a little explanation text. A few days later, we all meet virtually in a Zoom chatroom for a quick (30 min-1 h) online session. You get comments, suggestions and help with building a Fiji or CellProfiler analysis pipeline tailor-made for your images.

If you are interested, click on the link below to apply:

BioImage Informatics

Super resolution microscopy course and seminars at Scilife

Hi there!

Hans Blom and the Advanced Light Microscopy facility at Scilife organise one of their great super resolution microscopy course and a bunch of great seminars in September.

More information about the course and the seminar program (26th of september) can be found here.

See you all there! 😀