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EMBO Practical Course in Advanced Optical Microscopy

Optical microscopy is in a state of explosive development. This is partly due to new technical advances, such as the use of photoproteins, computing and novel optics and partly to a shift of innovation from a few specialists working within manufacturing companies to a wider community of scientist users.

This EMBO course has been running for nine years. There will be 2-3 lectures each day throughout. The first 3 days will be spent setting up microscopes for brightfield and epifluorescence microscopy, including polarisation and interference contrast methods. The program can be viewed here. The final 6 days will be organised in rotations around the 9 experiments listed below.

Developmental Biology

1,2 Two experiments with confocal imaging

3 CCD imaging and deconvolution, microinjection, genetically encoded probes, gene gun

Cell Physiology

4 Confocal imaging with electrophysiology

5 CCD imaging with electrophysiology

6 Photolysis and photometry

7 Total internal reflection fluorescence imaging

8 Laser traps

9 Marine bioluminescence

Special demonstrations and hands-on exercises

• Multiphoton confocal imaging
• Quantitative interference microscopy
• Use of an optical bench for basic experiments on scanning and apertures
• Spectroscopy and filters
• Abbe’s experiments on the role of diffraction in microscope image formation with absorption and phase objects.

Preparations used will include: invertebrate preparations (tunicates, molluscan neurones), zebra fish, mammalian brain slices, Fucus, Arabidopsis, and cell lines view/download course poster

The experiments will be in the large classroom at the MBA and in rooms nearby. Use will be made of marine specimens where possible and student may have an opportunity to trawl for benthos and plankton, depending on weather and availability of the MBA research vessel.

At the end of the course there will be the traditional presentation of the ‘Plymouth Glass Jellyfish Trophy’ to the student handing in the best answers to numerical questions on microscope optics (normally discussed in the local pub).

Date

2011-03-23 - 2011-04-02

Contributions

Programme

No programme found