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  • Thermal Control for Long Exposure Imaging

    CCDs are well-established scientific sensors for cameras. A major benefit of CCD sensors is the extremely low dark current that allows long exposure imaging. In contrast, CMOS sensors have dark currents 100-1000x greater than CCDs.

  • oSPIM and doSPIM

    Conventional fluorescence microscopy uses high-intensity light to illuminate the sample, but this excites all fluorophores in the light path, not just the plane of interest. The result is that light emitted from outside the focal plane contributes to the image.

  • Tiling Light Sheet

    Light sheet microscopy, otherwise known as selective plane illumination microscopy (SPIM), is a well-established 3D imaging technology for its ability to image large samples quickly and with high resolution in 3D. In contrast to conventional 3D imaging technologies, the sample illumination path is perpendicular to the fluorescence detection path in light sheet microscopy, as seen in Fig.1.

  • What Is Light Sheet Microscopy

    Conventional fluorescence microscopy involves flooding the whole sample with light and receiving emission light from the focal plane and also out-of-focus areas, resulting in lots of background fluorescence. Signal can be improved but involves using more intense laser light, which often results in phototoxic effects that can damage and eventually kill the sample organism.

  • What is GFP

    One of the most important discoveries in the field of fluorescent microscopy was found in a jellyfish in the 1960s. Osamu Shimomura of Princeton University was studying Aequorea victoria, a bioluminescent jellyfish.

  • Multiomics

    The phenotype of an organism is determined by the central dogma of molecular biology that states, “DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes protein” (Crick, 1970). These “omes” have been studied for a number of years in the fields of genomics (DNA), transcriptomics (RNA) and proteomics (proteins) as researchers look to understand the flow of information from genetic causes of disease to the functional consequences

  • What Is Widefield Imaging?

    Any microscope technique where the entire sample is exposed to light is known as ‘widefield’ imaging. The counterpart to widefield is confocal, where pinholes are used to block most of the light to and from the sample

  • Introduction To Single Molecule Microscopy

    Fluorescence microscopy is a workhorse technique in biological sciences allowing specific biological structures to be labeled and imaged with high contrast. Single molecule imaging represents a subset of fluorescence microscopy techniques that uses fluorescent tags to detect and analyze individual single molecules.

  • Labeling Proteins For Single Molecule Imaging

    Fluorescent microscopy techniques rely on the fact that molecules of interest fluoresce or can be made to fluoresce. Most proteins of interest require a fluorescent tag, as intrinsically fluorescent POIs are rare and the exception to this rule.

  • Brillouin Microscopy

    The mechanical properties of cells and tissues play an important role in cellular function and disease development. However, standard methods for probing these mechanical properties are mostly invasive and limited to the sample’s surface.

  • Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS)

    Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) measures fluctuations in fluorescence intensity coming from any physical, chemical, or biological effects on the fluorophore of interest. In principle, light is focused in an area of the sample and the fluctuations in the fluorescence intensity in this area are measured.

  • Optical Trapping

    Optical Trapping, also known as Optical Tweezers (OT), is a technique that uses light scattering to hold an object in place. OT is based on a concept outlined by Arthur Ashkin in 1986 that later earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018.