Science Lab

Learn. Share. Contribute. The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems. Find scientific research and teaching material on the subject of microscopy. The portal supports beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies. Become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise.

A 17th-century compound microscope (© Golub Collection – University of California, Berkeley/Steven Ruzin, Curator)

A Brief History of Light Microscopy

The history of microscopy begins in the Middle Ages. As far back as the 11th century, plano-convex lenses made of polished beryl were used in the Arab world as reading stones to magnify manuscripts.…

From Light to Mind: Sensors and Measuring Techniques in Confocal Microscopy

This article outlines the most important sensors used in confocal microscopy. By confocal microscopy, we mean "True Confocal Scanning", i.e. the technique that illuminates and measures one single…

Workflows & Protocols: How to Use a Leica Laser Microdissection System and Qiagen Kits for Successful RNA Analysis

Laser Microdissection (LMD) allows isolating individual cells or chromosomes and is a well established technique for sample preparation prior downstream analysis of the nucleic acid content via PCR or…

What You Always Wanted to Know About Digital Microscopy, but Never Got Around to Asking

Digital microscopy is one of the buzz words in microscopy – and there are a couple of facts that are useful to know. Georg Schlaffer, Product Manager with Leica Microsystems, has often been asked…

Schematic graph of the light path in a Spalt-Ultramikroskop.

Confocal and Light Sheet Imaging

Optical imaging instrumentation can magnify tiny objects, zoom in on distant stars and reveal details that are invisible to the naked eye. But it notoriously suffers from an annoying problem: the…

Universal PAINT – Dynamic Super-Resolution Microscopy

Super-resolution microscopy techniques have revolutionized biology for the last ten years. With their help cellular components can now be visualized at the size of a protein. Nevertheless, imaging…

Immersion Freezing for Cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy: Applications

A well established usage case for cryo-TEM is three-dimensional reconstruction of isolated macromolecules, virus particles, or filaments. On one hand, these approaches are based on averaging of…

Immersion Freezing for Cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy: Fundamentals

The high vacuum required in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) greatly impairs the ability to study specimens naturally occurring in an aqueous phase: exposing "wet" specimens to a pressure…

Video Tutorials: Filling and Assembling of Different Carriers for High-Pressure Freezing

High pressure freezing (HPF) is a cryo-fixation method primarily for biological samples, but also for a variety of non-biological materials. It is a technique that yields optimal preservation in many…