microscope
LabTV: Curious about Microscopy
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Growing up amid the potato and corn fields of western New York state, Jordan Myers got a firsthand look at what it was like to work as a farmer, a homebuilder, even a chimney sweep. But it was television—specifically, “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and “The Magic School Bus”—that introduced him to what would become his future career: science.
Propelled by his curiosity about how living things work, Myers left his hometown of Savannah to attend New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology, where he earned an undergraduate degree in biotechnology, and then headed off to pursue advanced degrees in cell biology at Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. There, as you’ll see in this LabTV profile, he’s trying to develop light microscopy techniques [1,2] to view the cell’s nuclear envelope at nanometer (nm) resolution—a major challenge when one considers that a red blood cell measures about 7,000 nm in diameter.
Diaper Compound Brings Change to Cell Microscopy
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Mouse brain tissue as viewed by traditional microscopy (left) and expansion microscopy (right), which makes it possible to visualize individual synapses (example in white box). In both views, green indicates neurons; blue, pre-synaptic proteins; and red, post-synaptic proteins.
Credit: Ed Boyden, Fei Chen, Paul Tillberg, MIT
Light microscopy has been a mainstay of neuroscience and many areas of biology for more than a century. But the resolution limit of light, based on immutable physical principles, has kept the fine details of many structures out of view. Scientists can’t change the laws of physics—but NIH-supported researchers recently devised a highly creative way to see images that were previously out of reach, by expanding the contents of tissue sections up to five times their normal size, while maintaining the anatomic arrangements. The new approach takes advantage of a compound used in—get this—disposable diapers!
By harnessing the super-absorbent properties of sodium polyacrylate, a polymer commonly used in diapers, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a new technique that makes it possible for conventional microscopes to produce super high-resolution images of brain cells. The name of the new technique? Expansion microscopy.
Cool Videos: Patching and Sealing the Cell Membrane
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Bill Bement describes himself as a guy who “passionately, obsessively, and almost feverishly” loves to study cells. His excitement comes through in our final installment of the American Society for Cell Biology’s Celldance 2014. Bement, an NIH grantee at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, shares his scanning confocal microscope with us for this fascinating glimpse into the rapid response of cells to repair holes, tears, and other structural damage in their protective outer membranes.
For most people, this damage response runs on biochemical autopilot, sealing any membrane break within seconds to keep the cell viable and healthy. But some people inherit gene mutations that make sealing and patching difficult, particularly in cells that operate under repetitive mechanical stress. For example, some forms of muscular dystrophy stem specifically from an inherited inability to repair breaks in the cell membrane of skeletal muscle cells. In one type of disease that affects both skeletal and cardiac muscle, a gene mutation alters the shape of a protein called dysferlin, which normally binds annexin proteins that, as noted in the video, play a vital role in patching holes. In the presence of a glitch in dysferlin, the rapid chain of biochemical events needed to enable such repair breaks down.
There’s still an enormous amount to learn about cell membrane repair, so it will be interesting to see what Bement’s microscope and camera will show us next.
Links:
Bement Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Celldance 2014, American Society for Cell Biology
NIH Support: National Institute of General Medical Sciences
Print-and-Fold Origami Microscope for 50 cents
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Here I am checking out the Foldscope at the White House Maker Faire on June 18. Very cool!
Credit: Manu Prakash, Stanford
When Stanford University bioengineer Manu Prakash traveled to a mosquito-infested rainforest in Thailand a couple of years ago, he visited a clinic with a sophisticated, $100,000 microscope that sat unused in a locked room. It was then Prakash realized that what global health workers really need is an ultra-low cost, simple-to-use, portable microscope that could be deployed in the field to diagnose disease—and he took it upon himself to develop one!
The result is the Foldscope, a ‘use and throwaway’ microscope that Prakash demonstrated last week at the first-ever Maker Faire at the White House. While I saw many amazing inventions and met many incredible inventors at this event, I came away particularly impressed by the practicality of this device and the ingenuity of its maker.
