Microscopy

In space no one can see you gleam – unless you use GFP

May 5, 2012
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In space no one can see you gleam – unless you use GFP

Will humans one day live on other planets than on Earth? I don’t know the answer to that. But I know that if humans attempt to settle on extraterrestrial land, we will want to take plants with us to provide us with food and make our air breathable (1). Before we can successfully embark on space-farming adventures, we need to understand how plants react and adapt to the extreme conditions in space and what genes or metabolic pathways are switched on in this process. Reporter genes help us to study responses to external conditions and stresses. Some of these...

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Of flour beetle grannies and cuddly head lice – taking a closer look at creepy crawlers

February 6, 2012
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Of flour beetle grannies and cuddly head lice – taking a closer look at creepy crawlers

When I was browsing YouTube for new science videos, I suddenly saw a preview image on the “recommended videos” sidebar that looked very familiar. Turned out that one of our work experience students had put together all the images she had taken on our scanning electron microscope to produce a short film! She also added a few images that Barry Martin and Jan Evins took for the Brookes Science Bazaar 2010 and that I have on my computer as well. This is a flour beetle. To me it always looks like an old woman in a cape and it...

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Charlie Chaplin and the Mysterious Microscope

January 7, 2012
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Charlie Chaplin and the Mysterious Microscope

In this video by Andrew Harrison, Charlie Chaplin and an unnamed plant biologist show us how they turn frozen peas into samples for microscopy. This is the more detailed video description from Chlorofilms, where the video won an honourable mention in the fourth competition. “In this video we used a Charlie Chaplin “spoof” This video will demonstrate that differential centrifuge, microscopy and staining are three important tools for study of plant cells. 1. under low speed of differential centrifuge, we can separate whole cells from the cell homogenate; 2. microscopy can reveal details of the cellular structures. 3. different...

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The Amazing Ultrastructure of Snowflakes

December 20, 2011
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They say that no two snowflakes are alike. But all of them share one thing: They are beautiful at any level of magnification. The Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, showcases tons of stunning EM images of snowflakes and snow crystals on their website. I have selected a few of my favourites, but their gallery is worth a visit or two.

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The world’s smallest Christmas card

December 8, 2011
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The world’s smallest Christmas card

How wide was the smallest Christmas card you ever got? Maybe 5 – 10 cm? Or even less? Captured by the Beltsville Electron Microscopy Unit, part of the USDA. Sixty Symbols has produced this fantastic video in which they document how to create what must be one of the tiniest Christmas card you can imagine – a snow crystal! Using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a focussed ion beam they manage to write their Christmas greetings on the surface of a facette with a width of 50 micrometer. That is the width of a hair! Absolutely amazing!

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March of the Chloroplasts and a playful waterflea

November 17, 2011
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March of the Chloroplasts and a playful waterflea

This video shows chloroplast in the aquatic plant Elodea (also known as waterweed). They move around in the flow of the cytoplasm, which is called cytoplasmic streaming. I guess you could compare it to wood floating along with the currents of a river! Pretty!! I also very much enjoyed this video of a waterflea playing with the unicellular algae Volvox.

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How to convert an iPhone into a pocket microscope

May 12, 2011
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What a fantastic idea! Read the full set of instructions at http://crabfuartworks.blogspot.com/2010/09/crabfu-5-iphone-microscope-mod.html.

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Meet the Microscopes

May 10, 2011
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Meet the Microscopes

“You must be the new research technician. Good to have you on board!” If the Brasilian doctor and scientistCarlos Chagas had said these words to you and asked you to look at Trypanosoma parasites with a microscope, it would have been a relatively straightforward task. At the beginning of the 20th century, light microscopes were the norm and electron microscopes had not yet been developed (check out the History of the Microscope for more information). Today however we have a wide choice of different microscope systems available at hand, which allow us to look at things as tiny as...

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“If You Move I Will Follow – The Organelle Love Song”

April 27, 2011
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“If You Move I Will Follow – The Organelle Love Song”

Have you already seen our new music video about laser tweezers? Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/lasertweezers This video is the result of a collaboration between the Plant Cell Biology Group at Oxford Brookes University and the Oxfordshire musician Cyrus Mower. It shows optical trapping of Golgi bodies in living Arabidopsis leaf cells. Please feel free to download the movie file on our website to show in lectures, presentations, lessons etc. Links: Plant Cell Biology at Oxford Brookes University: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/plant_endomembrane Plant Cell Biology at Wageningen University: http://www.pcb.wur.nl/UK/ In plant cells, the Golgi apparatus consists of many small stacks (Golgi bodies), which move...

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“Sweet Home Apparatus – The ultimate Golgi music video”

April 27, 2011
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“Sweet Home Apparatus – The ultimate Golgi music video”

“I love the Golgi apparatus”…if you love the Golgi apparatus too, you should listen to this song – you won’t get it out of your head afterwards, promise! This video is a collaboration between the Plant Endomembrane Research Group at Oxford Brookes University (UK) and the band “Professor Science”. We are interested in the function and organisation of the plant secretory pathway and use a lot of confocal laser scanning/electron microscopy to take a closer look at our plant cells. When we discovered David Mansfield’s song “Sweet Home Apparatus” online, we thought that the combination between his song about...

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