MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

That'd be my initials carved (not sure that's the right word) into the nucleus of a single cell. DNA is blue, a protein that localizes to sites of DNA damage caused by the laser. The laser microdissection microscope is even more precise than I thought. I actually tried this a bunch of times in a bunch of different cells and this one took this best by far. I tried writing stuff across a bunch of cells so that the letters would be large but that didn't work as well as I thought it would. This however, exceeded my expectations by a long shot.


And now to shift gears, here's a bunch of very out of focus cyanobacteria. They fluoresce in green red and yellow-orange under the appropriate excitation wavelength but strongest in the green and red emission. Here's a composite of red and green channels.

Very artistic!...

BillT

Like the initials! Lots of possibilities: bank pin numbers, your true name, marriage proposals ... that last one should offer protection against a hasty and hence soon to be regretted decision.

Those are bright and clear colours - very nice, do you have them in focus?

That's incredible. How on earth do you control the laser that precisely? Would like to see some photos of the equipment...

Incrdible. The cyanobacteria image is very beautiful.Thank you for sharing.

You are like Zorro with a laser.

Or maybe a graffiti artist?

Can you do "Kilroy was here"? ;^)

Very cool. We sometimes forget that microscopes have real, serious jobs to do, and there are accomplished folks like you that are so skilled that run them.

Rod

The laser software just lets me draw freehand lines as if you were using the line tool in paint or photoshop or gimp, holding shift lets you draw straight lines. And you can also use shape tools. I unfortunately don't have a photo of the machine but it's a Zeiss inverted scope with a PALM microbeam system, I forget what the scope is exactly.

The Leica LMD series comes with a giant wacom table and you can use the pen to draw on the screen and the laser follow the path.

I didn't take in an focus picture of the bacteria. However when I get around to it I'll have to take photo or video of the other organism in there. I have a protist that really likes eating them and it eats like 4 or 5 of them at a time somehow. I tried getting good DIC or phase or brightfield images of it but there's so much stuff on the inside that it looks like a mess. I'll have to try with the oil lenses instead of air.

Now that's pretty cool right there!
CE