Yet another chance to try RNA labelling: The FENO facility, here in Flemingsberg, has purchased a machine to multiplex RNA scope. They will present it on the 16th of October. 🙂
Here is the announcement.
Images
Robust RNA labeling in cells and tissue
A beginner’s guide to tissue clearing
Someone telling you where to start your clearing experiments! Sounds like a dream paper, doesn’t it? 😉
Here is the link.
Omnipaque: a pre-made Histodenz solution for clearing
Buying Histodenz powder from Sigma is rather expensive. Alternatively, you can buy Omnipaque from GE Healthcare. It is the same product but comes as a solution and costs around 2000 sek for 10 bottles of 350 mL!
A fixable membrane dye that doesn’t do flip flop!
One of the major pains with membrane dyes for live cells is that within 30min, all the vesicles inside the cells are also labelled. Another major pain is when you discover that your dye is not fixable…
The CellBright dyes label membrane is apparently fixable, even with methanol, and doesn’t do the flip flop thing! Potentially extremely useful for image analysis!
Please leave a comment to let us know how it went for you! 🙂
Clearing and expansion microscopy course at Scilife in September!
Expansion microscopy and clearing are fantastic tools for anyone who images thick (> 1 cell diameter) fixed samples. We are now lucky to have access to state of the art talks and hands-on workshops at Scilife in September. Register early not to be disappointed!
Please apply to Hans (first day) and David (second day) directly!
Seminar by Anne Carpenter, the ‘mother’ of CellProfiler
If you are looking for an inspiring talk about a super freeware for image analysis, go to Scilife in Uppsala on the 8th of June and listen to Anne Carpenter from the Broad Institute where CellProfiler was born! Check out the details here.
Neubias workshop for image analysis at the heart of Scotland!
Here is where to register for the next Neubias, the European Image Analysis school! Learn how to build your own image analysis pipeline with expert help! 🙂
Only a few days left to register!
Skip the secondary, Part 2! :)
In one of the LCI earlier posts, you can read about easy and powerful it is to skip using a secondary antibody while still having a bright signal.
We have not had any feedback on the Kromnigon technology but we got to hear great praise and see superb images of a similar product called Mix-n-Stain by Biotium.
You can now directly label your stock of primary or favorite tag ligand (Snap, Clip, Halo, TMP) in just 30 min! Each primary gets 3-5 fluorophores according to the Mix-n-Stain brochure so there is no problem with dim directly labelled antibodies as used to be the case in older labeling technologies.
Skipping the secondary means gaining time but also no more headache about matching antibody and tissue species so you can stain your tissue with 7 or 8 antibodies if you image with narrow filters or spectral unmixing.
Bye bye ‘No primary’ controls! It is high time to switch to an isotype control: buy an antibody with the same isotype as your favorite antibody and label it in the same way. This allows you to detect any aspecific binding of your primary antibody.
Last but not least, skipping the secondary means less animals used to produce them. That alone is a bit plus!
It costs 100€ or so to label 50 ug of antibody. Definitely worth a try! 🙂
Learn about Expansion microscopy
Next wednesday morning, David Unnersjö-Jess from KTH/Scilife will give a talk at the Live cell imaging facility (9:30, DNA seminar room), about a new and exciting aspect of microscopy: Expansion microscopy.
This is a technique where one ‘blows up’ the sample while keeping all proteins in place and at the same relative distance from each other. The sample is simply ‘inflated’. One can then take images of it with a normal microscope but the resulting image give a much higher resolution than normal microscopy.
After the seminar, David will have an open discussion with anyone who would like to try the technique.