Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support 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!

Image of MDCK (Madin-Darby canine kidney) cells taken with phase contrast.

Phase Contrast and Microscopy

This article explains phase contrast, an optical microscopy technique, which reveals fine details of unstained, transparent specimens that are difficult to see with common brightfield illumination.

Immersion Objectives

How an immersion objective, which has a liquid medium between it and the specimen being observed, helps increase the numerical aperture and microscope resolution is explained in this article.

Precise Spatial Proteomic Information in Tissues

Despite the availability of imaging-based and mass-spectrometry-based methods for spatial proteomics, a key challenge remains connecting images with single-cell-resolution protein abundance…

Images of smooth muscle cells during wound healing. Courtesy L.S. Shankman, Ph.D., University of Virginia.

Studying Wound Healing of Smooth Muscle Cells

This article discusses how wound healing of cultured smooth muscle cells (SMCs) in multiwell plates can be reliably studied over time with less effort using a specially configured Leica inverted…

How to Prepare your Specimen for Immunofluorescence Microscopy

Immunofluorescence (IF) is a powerful method for visualizing intracellular processes, conditions and structures. IF preparations can be analyzed by various microscopy techniques (e.g. CLSM,…

Fluorescent Dyes

A basic principle in fluorescence microscopy is the highly specific visualization of cellular components with the help of a fluorescent agent. This can be a fluorescent protein – for example GFP –…

Images from 2 time-lapse series of the same Sf21 moth larval cells illuminated with: TIRF mode. Images were acquired with the DMi8 S Infinity TIRF HP system. Courtesy of Domokos Lauko, Welch Lab, Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Studying Actin Cytoskeleton and Microfilament Assembly

This article demonstrates how actin microfilament assemblies can be clearly visualized with superior resolution at the plasma membrane of a cell using a DMi8 S Infinity TIRF High Power imaging…

Virally labeled neurons (red) and astrocytes (green) in a cortical spheroid derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells. THUNDER Model Organism Imager with a 2x 0.15 NA objective at 3.4x zoom was used to produce this 425 µm Z-stack (26 positions), which is presented here as an Extended Depth of Field (EDoF) projection. Images courtesy of Dr. Fikri Birey from the Dr. Sergiu Pasca laboratory at Stanford University, 3165 Porter Dr., Palo Alto, CA

Download The Guide to Live Cell Imaging

In life science research, live cell imaging is an indispensable tool to visualize cells in a state as in vivo as possible. This E-book reviews a wide range of important considerations to take to…

Plant Cell Development and Morphogenesis

The article discusses how tubulin molecules, which make up microtubules, in plant cells can be studied with total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy to better understand tubulin…