New Microscope Watches Cells in 3D 50
Jamie found a story about a new 3D Microscope which creates 3D videos of cells in action. Traditionally scientists have had to choose between high resolution and animation, so no doubt this device will cure the common cold.
"Cells in action." (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
even better, Live Pharynx Action! (Score:1)
Re:"Cells in action." (Score:4, Funny)
The Common Cold (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Scientists are already making plans to rename it to the "Pygmalion" family of viruses.
Now I get it. (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously though, this is Big Medicine. I know a couple of guys researching treatments for congenital pancreatic cancer who would kill to get their hands on something like this.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I hope by that you just mean to kill cells.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, if all you had was a fever, the cure is simple and well know: more cowbell.
Re: (Score:1)
You know, maybe I could use some more cowbell.
Re: (Score:1)
Schering-Plough are developing an antiviral drug, pleconaril, that targets picornaviruses, the viruses that cause the majority of common colds. Pleconaril has been shown to be effective in an oral form.
Picornaviridae [wikipedia.org] is a family that supersets rhinoviruses and enteroviruses. So it seems that the vast majority of colds could be targeted with a single drug.
Move over YouTube... (Score:5, Funny)
Bad summary... (Score:5, Informative)
Just when we need it ! (Score:3, Funny)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SCOX [yahoo.com]
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
or maybe just a tax write-off.
a bit disappointing, really (Score:1)
Actually buy one (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there a company actually selling these then or is it a one off experimental microscope?
Good job those 1TB hard disks are out, because the storage requirements of these sorts of things is insane. The researchers will be wanting to do things like 24 hour time lapse 3D movies with 60 second frame intervals - repeatedly. I suppose I get to play with ever bigger storage systems
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Death by light (Score:5, Interesting)
Just think of the physics. Most digital sensors need about 10,000 to 100,000 photon to register a full response (i.e, "white") and to see 30 frames per second, that's 300k to 3 million photons per second per pixel. At high resolution a single cell might be 100 pixels by 100 pixels. That means that the poor creature is being hit by 3 to 30 billion photons per second. Even if there's no UV and all heat is removed from the subject, visible light photons in a high enough flux rate will induce various photochemical reactions that damage DNA, denature proteins, and photo-oxidize cellular chemicals. Or to put in another way. consider the amount of light needed to image the average landscape and then concentrate it on a single cell. Even with high-gain amplifiers (= grainy, low-light pictures), the shear concentration of light means the creature doesn't last long.
Re:Death by light (Score:5, Informative)
The article says that they are actually imaging the refracted light. Since this technique doesn't require any amount of sample absorption at all, they can use a minimally absorbing wavelength, thereby keeping sample damage to an absolute minimum. In fact since they are measuring refracted light, the technique works best at wavelengths where absorption is as low as possible (but refractive index contrast is as high as possible).
From the description, it doesn't sound like the illumination would be much more intense than what a normal microscope generates. Most cells don't experience significant photo-damage under such illumination conditions.
Some current imaging systems use a raster-scanned focused-laser spot to generate the images. By using high-quality detectors the light-levels can be kept low enough that cell damage is prevented. Thus the technique from the article probably induces less cell damage than currently used techniques. Not to mention that the fact that you don't have to stain or modify the cells eliminates the toxicity (or perturbing effect) or those staining agents.
Re:Death by light (Score:5, Informative)
"Cellular Organization and Substructure Measured Using Angle-Resolved Low-Coherence Interferometry [biophysj.org]", Wax A, Yang C, Backman V, Badizadegan K, Boone C, Dasari RR, Feld MS. Biophysical Journal 82: 2256-2264 (2002).
In the experimental section of that article they say: This appears to be one of their more recent publications:
"Quantitative phase imaging of live cells using fast Fourier phase microscopy [osa.org]", Niyom Lue, Wonshik Choi, Gabriel Popescu, Takahiro Ikeda, Ramachandra R. Dasari, Kamran Badizadegan, and Michael S. Feld. Applied Optics, Vol. 46, Issue 10, pp. 1836-1842.
In that paper they say: The illumination sources are not very intense, but are powerful enough to cause cell damage if they were highly focused. From looking over the papers it doesn't seem that this is the case. For what it's worth, the papers do not mention cell damage as being a concern.
Overall the technique seems to have serious promise. It essentially involves doing laser interferometry on the sample at multiple angles, and reconstructing the 3D image. As they mention in their papers, it has the advantage of interfacing with conventional confocal microscope designs. Thus it could be added as an option on existing setups. It appears to have some exacting requirements (like all holography/interferometry it will be sensitive to vibrations, etc.), but overall seems like the type of thing that could be rapidly built into existing labs and commercial instruments.
Re:Death by light (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Until June, I had been working in a live-cell imaging laboratory for nearly four years. There's a whole list of criteria that will cell proliferation while being grown on a microscope. My lab had (before I arrived) already proven they could grow cells on a microscope stage that would match cells grown in an incubator (ie, number of mitotic events). These like this are important.
A few people have mentioned bits about imaging and I thought I'd kind of list the important ones:
Okay (Score:3)
Press Release Science (Score:5, Interesting)
While interesting, the article had several fallacies in it.
For one, cells can be viewed while alive - fixative isn't always necessary. Motility studies, for exmaple, don't actually kill the cells (or sperm). For another, dyes aren't the only technique to view cells - plasmid insertion into bacteria with a fluorescent marker not only allows cells to be seen, but doesn't harm the cell.
Secondly, I find it decidedly inconvenient that this can only view small images. My current research is in bacterial biofilms - living and dead. I haven't had any trouble viewing living biofilms under a fluorescent or confocal microscope. What if you want to study the chemotaxis of groups of cells? Most cells, eukaryote or prokaryote, talk to each other and can respond differentially to external signals.
Thirdly, even if you can view these cells, only in very specific instances will it give clues about functionality. Sure, that's better than nothing, but it's not the miraculous panacea that the article describes. The mechanics of drug interaction are much more complex than can be determined by simply looking at a cell.
Finally, from a research standpoint, I have to ask how much this costs. Is the cost-benefit ratio really that good that spending large amounts of money to get this is worth it? Especially considering how in reality it has such a limited usage? I would tend to assume no. There may be some very useful things you can do with this, but it just seems like much more of a toy than anything.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What's interesting about this is the cell organelle contrast. Yes, you can view living cells without exogenous contrast. No, not many good techniques exist which can show internal s
Re: (Score:1)
That's the link I failed to format properly, to an interactive Java tutorial demonstrating the power of DIC (Differential interference contrast).
Re: (Score:1)
What's interesting about this is the cell organelle contrast. Yes, you can view living cells without exogenous contrast. No, not many good techniques exist which can show internal structure very clearly, in vivo, with no exogenous contrast. Differential interference contrast (DIC) is nice (Interactive Java Tutorial demonstrating this common technique).
Organelle contrast, and being able to see the organelles is interesting, but I don't think that it's as useful as the article describes. In very specific circumstances, it may give hints as to what is going on, but that's it. It's like looking at a computer program as it's running, and saying you'll be able to figure out the code. You may be able to do it in some instances, but those are very limited.
I chose to respond to these comments to shed some light on the science. This, however, is just plain argumentative, short-sighted, etc etc. On a topic more accessible to the general public it would be obvious flamebait.
Perhaps, perhaps not. The article makes a point to mention that it can't take very large or thick im
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway, chemotaxis is fascinating to me. Have you read any Brian Goodwin?
Article figure somewhat mislabeled (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
full of patches and security vulnerabilities, no? (Score:2)
oh, microSCOPE.
never mind.
3D movies of living cells (Score:1, Informative)
I have a real question, not trolling. Rife micro.. (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rife [wikipedia.org]
Various sites (enthusiasts/nutballs) claim that using it, he was able to isolate various living organisms, including a cancer-causing virus , and kill them with electromagnetic wave harmonics.
What I'm reall
Re: New Microscope Watches Cells in 3D (Score:1)
Engineering hot, thinking not (Score:2)
Sony? (Score:1)