Image – Page 13 – The Live Cell Imaging facility

Super resolution morning

On Thursday (15th of March), Teng-Leong Chew, director of the Advanced Imaging Center at the Janelia Research Center (Virginia, USA), will come to Stockholm and present what his facility can potentially do for you.

The AIC offers a crazy service where visiting scientists can use the super resolution systems they develop there with the help of their experts. This service is free of charge, including accommodation.

This can allow you to quickly run a project involving STED, PALM/STORM, SIM, adaptive optics or super resolution lattice light sheet microscopy.

Together with Leong’s presentation of his facility, there will be a few seminars by the Live Cell Imaging facility as well as several parts of the Advanced Light Microscopy facility at Scilife.

This is a great opportunity to catch up with what is available to you here and in the US. Hope to see you there! 🙂

Gluing samples

If your sample floats in its dish and you are desperate to image it, here is a good tip:

Vetbond is a good place to start! Glues super fast and is compatible with live cell imaging! 🙂

There are plenty of other similar products so please leave a comment to tell us if this works for you or not or which is your favorite tissue glue!

Skip the secondary! :)

Kromnigon makes fluorescent labels called FlexiStain that stick to biotin-labelled primary antibodies.

This means that you skip the species matching headache when using multiple antibodies and your labeling is faster! I have not tried myself but they offer free trial kits so give it a try! You are welcome to leave comments on this posts to tell us if it works or not! 🙂

Note: We have not had very good experience with these dyes. Check this post instead.

DAPI is so passé!! ;)

If you are tired of DAPI bleeding through your weak green channel but are stuck to using blue for the nucleus, you might want to give a try to Syto41.

Must better excitation efficiency at 405 nm and much narrower emission spectrum!

And Syto also comes in other colors. 🙂

The LCI facility has moved to Neo! :)

That’s it! We have done it! We have moved to Neo! 😀

The trip to Neo (just next door to Novum) started at the end of 2015! 2 years and lots of planning meetings later, all the companies involved (mostly Bergman Labora and Zeiss but also Alveole, La Vision Biotech, MMI and Andor) started dismantling, moving and reassembling our 7 microscopes on the 4th of December. Now, one and a half month later, everything is nearly done! Exciting! 🙂

Adaptive Optics

The next big thing in microscopy comes straight from the sky! Apparently astronomers have been using adaptive optics for years to improve their images and it is only getting into our microscopes now!!

Adaptive optics takes the nightmarish situation seen in b and puts it back straight as in a! This is done by measuring the wave front and deforming a mirror to reshape the wave front to perfection!

Sounds like a dream but I have actually seen it in action at the 2016 AQLM course and there was a definite WOW effect! 🙂

Check this review to learn more

Expansion microscopy

Just imaging being able to image very tiny details in your sample on your favorite microscope without using super resolution!!

Expansion microscopy is definitely worth trying if your sample is fixed and what you want to measure is smaller than the detection limit of the microscope (around 250 nm)! There are people at Scilife who have implemented it and he is happy to collaborate! Just ask us! 🙂

This is just one example among many where expansion microscopy did wonders!

Scilife super res course

Super resolution course early February at Scilife with great presentations accessible to everyone! I will go to the DNA-paint talk! 🙂

Check it out here.

GoPro

Eurobioimaging is organizing a microscopy image competition and there is a GoPro camera to grab! 🙂 Apply here!

Phallaina

Talking about Art and Science, here is a tip about how to enjoy every minute (at least I did) of Phallaina by Marietta Ren, a new art form called Bande Défilée in French, which might translate to Streaming Strip? Strolling Graphic Novel? If you ask me, bande défilée sounds best but I am biased! 🙂

The first graphic novel/comic strip entirely made for tactile screens like your mobile phone.

Here is the trailer. One will need to download a big app but it can be deleted afterwards. French or English texts.

It is totally worth it, especially for those who enjoy science/art/diving.

Not exactly a microscopy post but… they do use medical imaging! :-/