mCherry-XL: brigther, more stable and with better spectra!

mCherry is a very popular red fluorescent protein. However it has several disadvantages:

  • It is shifted towards far red (ex peak 585 nm) so it often is not imaged optimally with the illumination sources and filters commonly available.
  • It bleaches fast

mCherry has now been evolved into mCherry-XL with several improvements:

  • This variant is shifted back towards green (ex peak 560 nm) therefore being very well excited with popular 561nm lasers.
  • It is 3 times brighter than mCherry
  • There is also a clear improvement in the lifetime for FLIM
  • Together the 2 points above means that less excitation power is required so it should help with the bleaching problem

Here is the paper. Therefore you should consider mCherry-XL for your future tagging with red fluorescence proteins.

BII webinar about a great tool! TissUUmaps

The BioImage Informatics facility at Scilife organizes a new presentation on free and open-source tools: TissUUmaps, a browser-based tool for GPU-accelerated visualization and interactive exploration of millions of datapoints overlaying tissue samples.

Users can visualize markers and regions, explore spatial statistics and quantitative analyses of tissue morphology, and assess the quality of decoding in situ transcriptomics data. TissUUmaps provides instant multi-resolution image viewing, can be customized, shared, and also integrated in Jupyter Notebooks. TissUUmaps was created in collaboration between BIIF and the Wählby lab. You can read more about it and test the software on its web page: https://tissuumaps.github.io/
During the seminar, we will go through basic usage of TissUUmaps: installation, loading images, markers and regions, change visualization settings, and how to load / save / share projects. The webinar will be given by Christophe Avenel and will take place on March 3rd, 09:00-10:00 (instead of our normal Call4Help session). There will be time for questions and discussion, so we hope this event to be very interactive. Please register here.

Super resolution STED event at Scilife in March

Nordic superresolution microscopy facility staff/researchers: STED

March 15th and 16th at 9-12 am. CONTACT: Hans Blom (hblom@kth.se)

Mar 15, 2022 9:00am

  • 9:00-9:45am – BNMI info / STED intro [Hans Blom & Daniel Smeets (Leica)]
  • 9:45-10:15am – STED sample prepping [Ulf Schwarz et al. (Leica)]
  • Break
  • 10:30-11:00am – Input from a Nordic STED facility [Jonathan R. Brewer (DaMBIC)]
  • 11:00-11:45am – STED demos [Luis Alvarez/Ulf Schwarz et al. (Leica)]
  • 11:45-12:00amExtra discussion time

https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/69376340781

Mar 16, 2022 9:00am

  • 9:00-9:45am – Live-cell STED [Giovanna Coceano (KTH Stockholm)]
  • 9:45-10:15am – Remote STED [Marko Lampe (ALMF/EMBL)]
  • Break
  • 10:30-11:00am – STED-FCS [Erdinc Sezgin (KI Stockholm)]
  • 11:00-11:45am – Advanced STED demos [Luis Alvarez/Ulf Schwarz et al. (Leica)]
  • 11:45-12:00amExtra discussion time

https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/67902191893

The LCI microscopy course 2022 is now open for registrations!

It is now time to apply to the intensive LCI microscopy course Jan/Feb 2022: Microscopy: improve your imaging skills – from sample preparation to image analysis

The aim for this course is to improve the microscopy skills of students and researchers who have already used a microscope to acquire digital images of fluorescent samples but feel that their knowledge is limited.

All the lectures at the LCI microscopy course will also broadcasted live online, free of charge and there is no need to register.

All details about the course including course schedule, how to apply, and how to follow the lectures are found here.

Scroll down to read the kind testimonies of our dear students! 😊

Hope you enjoy the LCI facility microscopy course 2022!

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz excellent talk on November 8th

Scilifelab invited Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz to give a talk IRL in Solna on November 8th. Jennifer works a lot with microscopy and is an excellent speaker so her talk is guaranteed to be inspiring!

Here is more info.

What can Artificial Intelligence do for you?

Check out the Nikon Artificial Intelligence (NIS.ai) webinar series to understand how Ai can help you in your microscopy experiments.

The NIS.ai Webinar Series will take place on Tuesdays at 14:00hrs and we are delighted to announce the first two talks:

  • June 29th 14:00 – Dr Carlo Beretta from Heidelberg University on “How to build a Bioimage Analysis Workflow with multiple image analysis tools”
  • July 6th 14:00 – Dr Marko Popovic from Nikon Centre of Excellence in Amsterdam on “Quantitative pathology”

Program and free registration: here.

Artificial Intelligence tools

Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning and Neuronal Networks are taking over the world, including microscopy. Within the next couple of years, you might well end up wondering how you got anything done without them!

Having an idea how Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning and Neuronal networks work means that you will be able to come up with ideas about how they can help you in your research.

The Neubias (Network of European image bioanalysts) webinars and meetings are a good place to learn.

Here are 2 upcoming webinars about tools to train and use AI algorithms.

From Images to Knowledge virtual workshop

Nov 30th-Dec 2nd, Janelia Research Center organizes a great image analysis workshop with loads of goodies. Everything is online and free. There are in depth and more general workshops about Deep Learning with different freeware, programming and scripting of all sorts, Big data things… Check the program here.

Super resolution course and webinars at ALM

Dear all

See here for more details about the ALM super resolution microscopy course in January. Note that the webinars are open to everyone (see registration email at the bottom of the page) and are always very interesting talks. 😊

Tweety turned into a power machine!

Our dear Tweety microscope, which was simplest and cutest of all the LCI systems, has muted into our most sophisticated power machine!

On the 24th at 10, we will run an online demo (link below) to show what our upgraded Tweety can deliver:

  • Much larger field of view (from 18 mm diagonal to 25 mm)
  • Upgraded single point confocal on the left side
  • Resonant scanner with 1024×1024 pixels (compared to 512×512 on our other resonant scanners), still the same speed (30 fps) and improved low noise
  • Spinning disk confocal on the right side with bypass to image wide field
  • 2 very sensitive cameras on the right side: one with the very large field of view and 11um pixels for best sensitivity and one with the normal field of view and 6.45 pixels for best resolution
  • Our great Primo is still on the back of the microscope to allow micropatterning of proteins at the bottom of a dish or micromanufacturing of wells in the shape/pattern of your choice
  • 2 wonderful silicon immersion objectives specialized for tissue imaging with automatic correction ring: 20x/1.05 and 40x/1.25

After the demo, the LCI users who have already been trained on our widefield systems can get access to Tweety for free after a mandatory short training.

Please add the demo in your calendar and make sure to test the link ahead of the meeting.

Link to the Zoom Meeting on the 24th at 10am: https://ki-se.zoom.us/j/7302561100

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