Microscopy
Facility Technician: Lisa
Hodgson BSc MSc
The Institute has a wide range of upright, inverted and stereo microscopes for
both epifluorescence microscopy and transmitted light microscopy (DIC, phase
contrast and bright-field). A Zeiss Axiovert 200M with full environmental control
is used for long time-lapse work on living cells.
The Institute also houses a Zeiss LSM 510 META laser scanning confocal microscope.
The system is fully automated and is mounted on a Zeiss Axiovert 200M inverted
microscope. The system has the capability to handle FRET, FRAP and FLIP techniques,
whilst the META module allows users to carry out Emission Fingerprinting which
can be used to separate overlapping emission signals and overcome the problem
of autofluorescence. The Volocity Restoration software package is currently
used to re-assign or remove out-of-focus fluorescence from both widefield and
confocal images.
Laser micro-dissection is performed using a Leica AS LMD microscope system. Single cells or a population of cells are micro-dissected from tissue sections or live cell cultures, by a focused UV laser. The material drops into a collection cap; DNA, RNA or protein analysis is then performed on these micro-dissected samples.
