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!

Lung organoid taken at the "liquid-air interface" with a THUNDER Imager 3D Cell Culture. The cells originate from transgenic mice, so that the different fluorescence represents the degree of differentiation of the respective cell (superposition). The image acquisition was performed on day 21 after the start of the culture. Reference: P. Kanrai, MPI-HLR Bad Nauheim.

Observing 3D Cell Cultures During Development

3D cell cultures, such as organoids and spheroids, give insights into cells and their interactions with their microenvironment. These 3D cell cultures are playing an increasingly important role for…

Cytosolic Ca2+ measurement using ratiometric Fura 2 dye

Cytosolic Calcium Ions in Melanoma Cancer Cells

In this article, a ratiometric fluorometric method for cytosolic calcium ion (Ca2+) measurement in cultured melanoma cells using Fura 2-AM cell loading and fluorescence microscopy imaging is presented…

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…

Dividing fission yeast S. pombe stained with two markers against spindle pole bodies (Pcp1-GFP, green) and cytokinesis ring (Rlc1-mCherry; red).

Studying Cell Division

Cell division is a biological process during which all cellular components must be distributed among the daughter cells. The division process requires firm coordination for success. Microscopy is…

The THUNDER Imager 3D Cell Culture visualizes an influenza (red) infected primary porcine lung epithelial grown in a multilayer of about 60 µm. The top layer shows cilia (green), which are responsible for mucus transport. Nuclei are stained in blue. Raw image vs. Large Volume Computational Clearing. Courtesy of Dr. Stefan Finke, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute, Riems (Germany).

Influenza-host Interactions in 3D Specimens

Stefan Finke studies virus-host interactions. It turns out that the ways the virus and host interact are different when comparing results from classical laboratory monolayer cell lines and “close to…

Images of the scaffold composed of fluorescent fibers: Left: raw widefield image. Right: THUNDER image with LVVC. Both images are maximal projections of a z stack of 55 images (total height of 130 µm). Images courtesy of Mollie Smoak, Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

Finding new Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineers use biomaterials for a variety of applications from drug delivery to supporting the regeneration of damaged or lost tissues to creating in vitro disease models. Scaffold architecture…

Mouse kidney section with Alexa Fluor™ 488 WGA, Alexa Fluor™ 568 Phalloidin, and DAPI. Sample is a FluoCells™ prepared slide #3 from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA. Images courtesy of Dr. Reyna Martinez – De Luna, Upstate Medical University, Department of Ophthalmology.

The Power of Pairing Adaptive Deconvolution with Computational Clearing

Deconvolution is a computational method used to restore the image of the object that is corrupted by the point spread function (PSF) along with sources of noise. In this technical brief, learn how the…

Improvement of Imaging Techniques to Understand Organelle Membrane Cell Dynamics

Understanding cell functions in normal and tumorous tissue is a key factor in advancing research of potential treatment strategies and understanding why some treatments might fail. Single-cell…

Studying Autoimmune Disease

This article discusses how autoimmune diseases, like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), can be studied more efficiently using thick, 3D kidney tissue specimens visualized with a THUNDER Imager . SLE…