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!

From Light to Mind: Sensors and Measuring Techniques in Confocal Microscopy

This article outlines the most important sensors used in confocal microscopy. By confocal microscopy, we mean "True Confocal Scanning", i.e. the technique that illuminates and measures one single…

Video: The White Light Laser – How to Effectively Excite Multiple Fluorophores with a Single Light Source

The Leica White Light Laser produces a continuous spectral output between the wavelengths of 470 and 670 nm. It allows you to select 8 excitation lines from 3 trillion unique combinations for…

Video Talk by Joseph Gall: Early History of Microscopy

Joseph Gall takes us through the history of early microscopes and the discovery of the cell. Compound microscopes were invented alongside the telescope in the 17th century; however these microscopes…

Workflows & Protocols: How to Use a Leica Laser Microdissection System and Qiagen Kits for Successful RNA Analysis

Laser Microdissection (LMD) allows isolating individual cells or chromosomes and is a well established technique for sample preparation prior downstream analysis of the nucleic acid content via PCR or…

Schematic graph of the light path in a Spalt-Ultramikroskop.

Confocal and Light Sheet Imaging

Optical imaging instrumentation can magnify tiny objects, zoom in on distant stars and reveal details that are invisible to the naked eye. But it notoriously suffers from an annoying problem: the…

Universal PAINT – Dynamic Super-Resolution Microscopy

Super-resolution microscopy techniques have revolutionized biology for the last ten years. With their help cellular components can now be visualized at the size of a protein. Nevertheless, imaging…

Immersion Freezing for Cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy: Applications

A well established usage case for cryo-TEM is three-dimensional reconstruction of isolated macromolecules, virus particles, or filaments. On one hand, these approaches are based on averaging of…

FusionOptics in Neurosurgery and Ophthalmology – for a Larger 3D Area in Focus

Neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists deal with delicate structures, deep or narow cavities and tiny structures with vitally important functions. A clear, three-dimensional view on the surgical field is…

Glycerol Spraying/Platinum Low Angle Rotary Shadowing of DNA with the Leica EM ACE600 e-beam

Glycerol spraying/low angle rotary shadowing (Aebi and Baschong, 2006) is a preparation technique used in biology to visualize structures yielding insufficent contrast with other techniques, due to…