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!

Coherent Raman Scattering Microscopy Publication List

CRS (Coherent Raman Scattering) microscopy is an umbrella term for label-free methods that image biological structures by exploiting the characteristic, intrinsic vibrational contrast of their…

Patch pipette touching a murine hippocampal neuron. Image courtesy of A. Aguado, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.

What is the Patch-Clamp Technique?

This article gives an introduction to the patch-clamp technique and how it is used to study the physiology of ion channels for neuroscience and other life-science fields.

Microscope image of cultured cells at the bottom of a dish.

How to do a Proper Cell Culture Quick Check

In order to successfully work with mammalian cell lines, they must be grown under controlled conditions and require their own specific growth medium. In addition, to guarantee consistency their growth…

Cellular polarization dynamics before and after magneto-mechanical stimulation

Mechanically Stressed Cells under the Microscope

Traumatic brain injury, skin scarring, or fibrotic heart remodeling are examples for mechanical stress which cells and tissues are exposed to. In this article, the authors introduce a non-invasive,…

TauInteraction – Studying Molecular Interactions with TauSense

Fluorescence microscopy constitutes one of the pillars in life sciences and is a tool commonly used to unveil cellular structure and function. A key advantage of fluorescence microscopy resides in the…

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…

Wt1b-positive myocardial cell adopting an epicardial cell morphology.

Wt1 Genes Can Induce a Cardiomyocyte to Epicardial-like Cell Fate Transition

From this study, it was concluded that Wt1 plays a yet undescribed role for cardiomyocyte differentiation by repressing chromatin opening at specific genomic loci and that sustained ectopic expression…

Depth coding of endothelial cells in zebrafish eye. Courtesy of Basile Gurchenkov, Imaging Center of the IGBMC, Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France.

Gentle 3D Imaging of Biological Samples

For 3D imaging of biological samples, light sheet microscopy is a powerful and sensitive tool allowing you to measure (sub)cellular dynamics over long periods of time. Meanwhile, confocal microscopy,…

Multi-color SRS image of a tri-cellular cancer spheroid

The Potential of Coherent Raman Scattering Microscopy at a Glance

Coherent Raman scattering microscopy (CRS) is a powerful approach for label-free, chemically specific imaging. It is based on the characteristic intrinsic vibrational contrast of molecules in the…