6 – Microscopy

When you need better resolution than what can be achieved using a traditional microscope, it can be very intimidating to figure out which machines will work best for your experiment. Super-resolution imaging methods require software reconstruction after image acquisition. This is because multiple images are required, and they need to be combined. Additionally, the points of light need to be reassigned to their true location. Today, we're going to discuss 5 different super resolution methods their pros and cons. Although Rayleigh Criterion is not broken, these techniques each feature creative ways to get around it.

When you're performing imaging, always make sure that any phenotype isn't just an artifact of unhealthy cells. If you're doing drug discovery, you want to ensure that the treatment isn't highly toxic to non-target cells. Therefore, it's important to understand the health of the cells.

Live cell imaging is advantageous for research were you may be worried about artifacts of fixation or when you want to measure a phenomenon over time. Live cell imaging is more difficult to achieve than fixed samples because we need to keep the cells live AND happy along with obtaining the images we need. We can reduce artifacts by keeping the cells in a favorable environment and minimizing external stressors. Here are 5 points to keep in mind when setting up your live cell imaging experiment.

Controls are an integral part of all science. And the complexity of fluorescent microscopy makes including the right controls in your experiments paramount. You should be including these 5 controls in your experiments: an unlabeled sample, a non-specific binding control, a positive and negative control, an antibody titration curve, and blinded image capture. With those controls, you can be sure that your experiments are what you think they are and perform your imaging with confidence. So, happy imaging!

Most people are familiar with coverslips being placed on slides to protect the sample, but that's not the only reasons that coverslips are important. They also affect the image quality. Coverslips function by working with your microscope to focus light to a single point and avoiding unnecessary noise in your image. Having the wrong type of coverslip will damage the quality of your images and the quality of the data you extract from those images.

I’m a scientist, not Perry Mason. I’m not a defense attorney or a detective. Why would I say that? Because well before March grant writers need to be a Perry Mason – make the case and defend it to have a successful Shared Instrument Grant (SIG). For those running core facilities (or Shared Resource Laboratories), then March is a critical time of the year, and we’re not talking basketball. A grant is a true story. This year’s deadline is March 21. It’s critically important in this tight funding climate to make sure nothing moves your grant from the “must-fund” to…