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!

Zebrafish heart showing the ventricle with an injury in the lower area

Cardiomyocyte Proliferation Upon Heart Injury in Zebrafish

VIDEO ON DEMAND - This edition of MicaCam focuses on the study of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) whose heart cells can fully regenerate after injury.

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…

Fish and Chips Sheet into the Light

The zebrafish larval brain is small and contains about 1 million times less neurons than the human counterpart. The neural circuitry and the general bauplan of the vertebrate brain, however, is…

DLS Sample Preparation: Using U-Shaped Glass Capillaries for Sample Mounting

The TCS SP8 DLS microscope system from Leica Microsystems is an innovative concept which integrates the Light Sheet Microscopy technology into the SP8 confocal platform. Due to its unique optical…

Real Time Observation of Neutrophil White Blood Cell Recruitment to Bacterial Infection In Vivo

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an emerging vertebrate model organism to study infection. The transparent larva comprises a fully functional innate immune system and enables live imaging of fluorescent…

Work More Efficiently in Developmental Biology With Stereo Microscopy: Zebrafish, Medaka, and Xenopus

Among the aquatic model organisms used in molecular and developmental biology the most prominent are the zebrafish (genus species: Danio rerio), medaka or japanese rice fish (genus species: Oryzias…

Organ Regeneration: An Unlikely Fish Tale

Spectacular discoveries in cardiac tissue regeneration are rapidly moving researchers closer to the goal of harnessing regenerative techniques to repair the human heart. Only eleven years ago, Dr.…

Find the Needle in the Haystack

The obvious has been explored. These days, biologists strive to identify and analyze hidden and rare events. The task is tackled by automatically screening large numbers of objects – typically growing…

Zebrafish embryo expressing the DsRed fluorescent protein under the control of a blood cell specific promoter.

Deep Tissue Imaging

Developmental biology using Multiphoton microscopy with OPO. To gain new insight into the fundamental control of cell response to physical changes and to study the dynamics and roles of biological…