A different kind of microscope

I apologize for the light posting around here.  Unfortunately, it’s likely to continue until I finish these experiments.  I might find a little more time for blogging while I’m writing my thesis–who knows?

Lately, I’ve been spending my time trying to learn how to use a confocal microscope and bend it to my will.  The score so far is:  Confocal-5, Elisabeth-1.  But, I think I’m getting the hang of it.

A confocal looks much the same as a regular fluorescence microscope.  However, there are a few key differences in the way that the fluorescent image is acquired.   First, instead of using a mercury bulb to shine light on your sample to cause the molecules to fluoresce, a laser beam is used.  Second, the microscope is set up in such a way as to filter out much of the fluorescence not in the current plane of focus.  Third, instead of being able to look directly at the image using the eyepiece, the image is scanned with a special electronic scanning apparatus that is controlled via a computer.  The image is then displayed on the computer screen.

There are many advantages to this system, however, I am using it for a very simple reason.  I need to be able to collect an image from a sample in which my fluorescent molecule gives off infra-red light.  My regular microscope can’t do that whereas the confocal microscope can.  On the one hand, it’s good for me to learn how to use this important instrument.  On the other hand, I feel a little silly for using it for my stated purpose.  It feels a bit like using a supercomputer to write an article because it’s the only one that has the word processing program you like.  The confocal microscope has tremendous power but I’m only using it for it’s most mundane purpose.  In a way that’s good, I suppose, because I’m learning how to walk before learning how to run, but I still feel like I should be doing something a bit more profound on the scope than collecting an infrared image.