We can repair your multiphoton laser (and your other microscope lasers too) . . .

Veroptics’ experienced, certified laser technicians can repair your titanium sapphire (or any other) lasers for less than the cost of factory service. CONTACT US for all your laser repair needs!

Coming soon . . . cooled IMX174 microscope cameras from Veroptics

Looking for a cooled microscope camera based on Sony’s fast and sensitive new IMX174 sensor? Veroptics will have cooled IMX174 cameras shipping soon! See HERE or CONTACT US for details or to pre-order one of our COOLED IMX174 cameras!

The Molecular Probes Handbook: Every microscopist needs one

“The Molecular Probes Handbook” has served as the “go to” resource for practical information on fluorescence probes and their applications for nearly 40 years now, even though Molecular Probes (the company) has long since been acquired by Invitrogen/Gibco/Life Technologies (for a little Wikipedia history lesson on Molecular Probes, see HERE). Fortunately, the catalog name remains the same, and is still an excellent resource. Get a hard copy, and keep it on your bookshelf – you won’t be disappointed:

http://www.lifetechnologies.com/us/en/home/references/molecular-probes-the-handbook.html

Yes, Molecular Probes also has a Facebook page.

And of course, an App too.

 

 

Fluorescence Spectra Viewers: Picking probes and filters

Here’s a great collection of Fluorescence Spectra Viewers:
http://searchlight.semrock.com
http://www.chroma.com/spectra-viewer
http://www.bdbiosciences.com/research/multicolor/spectrum_viewer/index.jsp
http://www.lifetechnologies.com/us/en/home/life-science/cell-analysis/labeling-chemistry/fluorescence-spectraviewer.html
http://www.biolegend.com/spectraanalyzer
http://www.ebioscience.com/resources/fluorplan-spectra-viewer.htm

And yes, you can get an App for that too:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fluorescence-spectraviewer/id421031826?mt=8

 If you have any questions about how to use these to optimize your fluorescence probe and filter selections, CONTACT US

Microscope Theory, Concepts, and Overview

Here are some outstanding general didactic resources for microscopists of all levels:
http://www.olympusmicro.com
http://www.microscopyu.com

(Some similar content on both sites.)

Excellent Microscopy Courses

If you really want to learn about microscopy from both practical and theoretical standpoints, well . . . first, we hope you’ll keep following this Blog, and feel free to EMAIL US with any questions you might have, or any topics you would like to see us cover in this Blog!

Second, you can attend one or many of these excellent Microscopy Courses, where anyone, beginner or expert, is bound to learn new things:

http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/resources/courses.html

http://www.mdibl.org/courses/Quantitative_Fluorescence_Microscopy/159/

http://www.ibiology.org/ibioeducation/taking-courses/ibiology-microscopy-course.html

 

More Practical How-To Methods (with Video) . . .

http://www.jove.com          (All kinds of video illustrated methods, many in Microscopy and Imaging techniques)

How to use Mitochondrial Membrane Potential Probes

When reading the scientific literature, it can be difficult to actually “figure out how to do things” solely from the Methods given in the paper. Fortunately, in scientific publishing, there is a growing trend toward more “practical” or “hands on” guides that provide greater detail on how to perform various kinds of experiments, including methods in Microscopy and Imaging.  For example:

Mitochondrial membrane potential probes and the proton gradient: a practical usage guide          (direct link to article)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21486251          (same article, Pubmed link)

Veroptics Practical Microscopy Tip #1: Use a shutter

All fluorophores bleach, some just bleach faster or slower than others. This can cause phototoxicity in your cells, and/or alter fluorescent intensity independent of your experimental variable(s). Neither of these are good things, particularly if you want to quantify your fluorescence and acquire meaningful data. Thus if you do any kind of fluorescence imaging, it is really important that you use a shutter on your excitation light source(s), to control light exposure to your samples. For quantitative fluorescence work, ideally you want to minimize and precisely equalize your samples’ light exposures, so that all experimental conditions (that will be compared in a single run) have seen the “same” amount of light exposure (and thus photobleaching).

The best ways to do this are: 1. Use only as much excitation light power as you need to get a decent image (and don’t saturate pixels!), 2. Minimize and equalize samples’ light exposure before taking data (for example, when scanning samples to focus or to find a field of view for imaging), AND 3. Use a shutter synchronized with your camera’s exposure time so that (especially) for data capture, the samples are ONLY exposed to the intense excitation light when the camera is actually acquiring an image.

Veroptics has many simple shutter solutions for fluorescence microscopy, so please CONTACT US and we will be happy to walk you through the process of synchronizing shutters with your image acquisition. It’s easier than you think, and we can help!