Leica Microsystems: Leica Science Lab

Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies – become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise!

What are the Challenges in Neuroscience Microscopy?

eBook outlining the visualization of the nervous system using different types of microscopy techniques and methods to address questions in neuroscience.

Going Beyond Deconvolution

Widefield fluorescence microscopy is often used to visualize structures in life science specimens and obtain useful information. With the use of fluorescent proteins or dyes, discrete specimen…

Left-hand image: The distribution of immune cells (white) and blood vessels (pink) in white adipose tissue (image captured using the THUNDER Imager 3D Cell Culture). Right-hand image: The same image after automated analysis using Aivia, with each immune cell color-coded based on its distance to the nearest blood vessel. Image courtesy of Dr. Selina Keppler, Munich, Germany.

Accurately Analyze Fluorescent Widefield Images

The specificity of fluorescence microscopy allows researchers to accurately observe and analyze biological processes and structures quickly and easily, even when using thick or large samples. However,…

Fluorescently stained mouse tibia, imaged with a THUNDER Imager 3D Tissue. Courtesy of Dr. Anjali Kusumbe, University of Oxford, UK.

High-resolution 3D Imaging to Investigate Tissue Ageing

Award-winning researcher Dr. Anjali Kusumbe demonstrates age-related changes in vascular microenvironments through single-cell resolution 3D imaging of young and aged organs.

Optimizing THUNDER Platform for High-Content Slide Scanning

With rising demand for full-tissue imaging and the need for FL signal quantitation in diverse biological specimens, the limits on HC imaging technology are tested, while user trainability and…

C. elegans Gonades - THUNDER Imager Adult hermaphrodit, Staining: blue - DAPI (Nucleus), green - SP56 (sperms), red - RME-2 (oocyte), mangenta - PGL-1 (RNA + protein granules) Image courtesy of Prof. Dr. Christian Eckmann, Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany

Physiology Image Gallery

Physiology is about the processes and functions within a living organism. Research in physiology focuses on the activities and functions of an organism’s organs, tissues, or cells, including the…

Virally labeled neurons (red) and astrocytes (green) in a cortical spheroid derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells. THUNDER Model Organism Imagerwith a 2x 0.15 NA objective at 3.4x zoomwas used to produce this 425 μm Z-stack (26 positions), which is presented here as an Extended Depth of Field(EDoF)projection.

Neuroscience Images

Neuroscience commonly uses microscopy to study the nervous system’s function and understand neurodegenerative diseases.

Pollen Flower - Taken with a 20x/0.8 objective, area of 6mm² with a depth of 100μm. 15 stitched tiles with 4 colors (DAPI/GFP/TRITC/Cy5) - a total of 13020 images. Video courtesy of James Marr, Leica Microsystems, USA

Developmental Biology Image Gallery

Developmental biology explores the development of complex organisms from the embryo to adulthood to understand in detail the origins of disease. This category of the gallery shows images about…

Cryo FIB lamella - Overlay of SEM and confocal fluorescence image. Target structure in yeast cells (nuclear pore proteine Nup159-Atg8-split Venus, red) marked by an arrow. Scale bar: 5 µm. Alegretti et al., Nature 586, 796-800 (2020).

Targeting Active Recycling Nuclear Pore Complexes using Cryo Confocal Microscopy

In this article, how cryo light microscopy and, in particular cryo confocal microscopy, is used to improve the reliability of cryo EM workflows is described. The quality of the EM grids and samples is…