[MURG] [>Htech] wired: 3d biological microscope for samples up to a couple of millimetres in size (fwd from alito@organicrobot.com)

Thu Sep 9 05:23:28 EST 2004

----- Forwarded message from Alejandro Dubrovsky <alito at organicrobot.com> -----

From: Alejandro Dubrovsky <alito at organicrobot.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 01:51:31 +1000
To: transhumantech <transhumantech at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [>Htech] wired: 3d biological microscope for samples up to a couple of
	millimetres in size
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(
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,64545,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5
)

Biology Enters Fourth Dimension  

By Daithí Ó hAnluain

A new microscope that lets scientists peer deeper into living organisms
than ever before has been developed by researchers at the European
Molecular Biology Laboratory.

"I've seen some very striking movies from them," said Scott Fraser,
professor in the bioengineering department at Caltech and director of
the Biological Imaging Center.

"Right now, the study of developmental processes like organogenesis
(origin and development of organs) is based on a series of snapshots
taken, sometimes at great labor, of what the structure of a forming
organ might be," Fraser said. "Then the researcher had to almost guess
how snapshot one became snapshot two. What (the new microscopes) will
allow people to do is actually watch that process take place. Every time
that's happened, new insights have occurred."

The technology is called Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy, or
SPIM, and it allows scientists, for the first time, to study relatively
large (2 to 3 millimeter) live organisms from many different angles,
under real conditions and with minimal disruption to the specimen.

A paper detailing the new device will appear in the journal Science
Friday.
SPIM recently allowed scientists to observe developmental changes within
embryos of fruit flies and observe the beating heart of a living Medaka
fish, providing biologists with some remarkable images and movies. 

"Over the years we've seen current microscopes falling short of what the
scientists need. We designed SPIM with European Molecular Biology
Laboratory biologists to make sure that it was completely suited to
their needs," said EMBL scientist Ernst Stelzer. "This new microscope is
easy to build, is about one-third the cost of current technologies and
gives scientists improved resolution by a factor of about five."

"I think it's a very nice advance; as with any development of this sort,
it should open what we can see inside a living embryo," said Fraser.

SPIM lets scientists view samples in a medium that mimics real
conditions, rather than cutting up and destroying the sample to fix it
to a slide, as traditional microscopy requires. SPIM shines a very thin
slice of light through the sample and records the image picked up by a
separate detector array. Micromotors, which can move the sample a half-
micron at a time, systematically move the specimen through the light
sheet to capture images from each layer. 

The information extracted from multiple, illuminated layers of the
sample can be run through image-processing algorithms that merge the
different views to create a 3-D image. Successive images captured over
time can be used to produce movies of growing embryos. 

As a result, scientists can record protein-expression patterns deep
inside living embryos. No out-of-focus light is created, so SPIM gives a
sharper image of the sample without the usual background blur. 

"We separated the illumination and detection of the sample, which means
we can reduce aberration and scattering, common problems with
microscopy," said Jan Huisken, one of the researchers on the SPIM
project. "As a result, we can look deeper inside a sample."

The EMBL researchers believe SPIM will become a standard tool in biology
labs.

"Not only is this microscope simply more powerful than many existing
technologies, but it also comes at the perfect time for biologists who
need to study complete systems," said Huisken. "The SPIM will really
open up a new area, 3-D cell research, and that's where developmental
biology wants to go. Biologists want to look at cells and gene and
protein expression in live samples, but at present that's not
possible." 

Stelzer added: "It enables completely new applications in scientific
research."

This is not the group's first innovation. Another recent achievement is
a diffraction-limited laser nanoscalpel that can be used to cut objects
as tiny as single microtubules within a cell, affecting either the
cytoplasmic environment or the plasma membranes of the cell. 

The researchers have a patent pending for the microscope, and they
believe that commercialization will begin in the next year or two.

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