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!

Introduction to Widefield Microscopy

This article gives an introduction to widefield microscopy, one of the most basic and commonly used microscopy techniques. It also shows the basic differences between widefield and confocal…

Photoactivatable, Photoconvertible, and Photoswitchable Fluorescent Proteins

Fluorescent proteins (FPs) such as GFP, YFP or DsRed are powerful tools to visualize cellular components in living cells. Nevertheless, there are circumstances when classical FPs reach their limits.…

Left: Tissue cells marked with an immunolabel (FITC) illuminated with wide-band UV excitation. Note the tissue structure with blue autofluorescence. Right: Same tissue and same immunostaining with FITC label illuminated with epi-illumination using narrow-band blue (490 nm) light. Note the increased image contrast (Ploem, 1967)

Milestones in Incident Light Fluorescence Microscopy

Since the middle of the last century, fluorescence microscopy developed into a bio scientific tool with one of the biggest impacts on our understanding of life. Watching cells and proteins with the…

HeLa cells stimulated with LPS. Image has been subjected to deconvolution.

Chronic Inflammation Under the Microscope

In the course of chronic inflammation certain body areas are recurrently inflamed. This goes along with many human diseases. With the help of widefield light microscopy, the underlying processes can…

Gene Editing with CRISPR/Cas9 - Breakthrough in Genome Engineering

The CRISPR/Cas9 system is one of several different bacterial systems for defense against viral attacks. It consists of two main components. One is a small piece of RNA which binds to the viral target…

Work Efficiently in Developmental Biology with Stereo and Confocal Microscopy: C. elegans

For scientists, technicians, and teachers working with the worm C. elegans in the research lab or classroom, this report is intended to give useful information to help improve their daly work. The aim…

Infinity Optical Systems

“Infinity Optics” refers to the concept of a beam path with parallel rays between the objective and the tube lens of a microscope. Flat optical components can be brought into this “Infinity Space”…

Video Talk by Daniel Axelrod: Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) Microscopy

Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) Microscopy is a technique that only illuminates dye molecules near a surface. In this video, the pioneer of TIRF Microscopy describes what this technique…

Handbook of Optical Filters for Fluorescence Microscopy

Fluorescence microscopy and other light-based applications require optical filters that have demanding spectral and physical characteristics. Often, these characteristics are application-specific and…