Thought it was crowded on the subway? Imagine you’re a protein inside of a cell! Just how crowded is it? Well, researchers have created a new FRET biosensor that changes color depending on how confined the space is. 

The surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) thing is, it turns out that the cell has mechanisms to keep things from becoming crushingly close inside. They observe that there’s just about as much space in the cell as there is when the cell is broken apart. 

-David

PS: we included a link to the site where you can directly read the abstract, but since the paper is available open source, you can (and should) read the pdf (always) and interrogate the study yourself! 

Thanks for following, everyone! 

We had to take an unexpected/expected break, unfortunately just when we were getting started because I gave birth to my second son! I was a few weeks early, so all of my plans for posts during my maternity leave got side railed. So, now that my leave phase is over, and its back to work, well be making regular posts, contributing as we planned in the beginning. 

The next post will be about techniques of cleaning optics, as todays was about materials. Hopefully coming up by Friday. 

We hope you will continue to follow us along and ask questions about our favorite subject! 

-Christina

Over the years I’ve worked in a number of different environments and I’ve found that, surprisingly, it’s the ratio of people to optics in a place that determines how they are handled. 

One of my first jobs was in a small company that specialized in manufacturing mirrors. It was a very small company. Were talking about 15-20 people. That made for a small number of people and lots of optics. They knew just what techniques and what materials to use and perhaps more importantly, they knew what not to do. 

The next place I moved to was a research lab. There was still a small number of people, but now, there was also a small number of optics. The small number of optics, combined with the high price tag of each, led to a general fear of touching them. I was looked at with horror as I “brazenly” cleaned a $1,000 optic that no one else dared touch (despite having a gob of something that I can only imagine came out of someone’s nose on it). 

Finally, I ended up using equipment housed in a large core facility. Large number of people, few optics. This is by far the worst situation. There are just a few elements that get used by everyone, and since these people don’t work with many optics, or pay for them, they have no idea how to care of them at all. 

With that in mind, I thought that it would be good to write down some of the techniques I’ve gathered over the years…

Our aim for this blog is to serve as a resource of expertise for all facets of microscopy.  We intend to share our knowledge and experience, explain proper microscopy techniques for acquisition, image analysis, and maintenance so that you can generate the best images possible, and keep doing so for years to come. 

In all fields of science research, generating images is typically only the beginning of the process of making comparisons and forming conclusions when trying to answer specific questions. Here we will attempt to cover all aspects of the process including (but not limited to):

• Choosing the right equipment, such as lenses, filters, optics, cameras, and of course microscopy techniques. 
• The general concepts of resolution, numerical aperture, refractive index and how they affect the performance of your optics. 
• The concepts and history of fluorescence microscopy. How does it work? Where did it come from? What can you do with it?
• The math free zone: A simple explanation of some of the more mathematical concepts underpinning microscopy techniques: Fourier transforms, bandwidth, spectra, nonlinear optics, etc.
• The do’s and dont’s for cleaning and maintaining microscope equipment in order to achieve optimal performance and clarity, as well as preserve your delicate and expensive equipment.
• Proper sample preparation, such as the kinds of dishes, slides, multi-well chambers, coverglass thicknesses and mounting media.
• Proper imaging techniques, including Koehler Illumination, exposure time and how not to destroy your sample.
• Methods of data storage, and how to choose the right file formats for your application.
• How to turn your images in to statistical data, and how to turn that data in to something meaningful. 
• What is this thing? Descriptions and explanations of some of the more (and some of the less) common microscope components. 

We hope to expand everyone’s knowledge of the field, and plan to post lots of pretty pictures from the world of the tiniest creatures and occasionally some random stuff of us goofing around the lab. We welcome all input from other experts in the field, welcome topic suggestions, and hope you will stay with us for the ride!

 -Christina