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Microscopy

Introduction to microscopes and how they work. Covers brightfield microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and electron microscopy.

Introduction

If you meet some cell biologists and get them talking about what they enjoy most in their work, you may find it comes down to one thing: secretly, they’re all microscope freaks. At the end of the day, what they really love is the chance to sit in a small, dark room for hours on end, communing with their favorite cell type through the lens of a beautiful microscope. That may seem odd, but the truth is, cells can be pretty gorgeous, like living stained glass. One of my favorite examples of this is the picture below, which shows cells in a very young leaf of thale cress, a small flowering plant related to mustard.
Confocal microscopy image of a young leaf of thale cress, with one marker outlining the cells and other markers indicating young cells of the stomatal lineage (cells that will ultimately give rise to stomata, cellular valves used for gas exchange).
Image credit: Carrie Metzinger Northover, Bergmann Lab, Stanford University.
This picture isn’t a plain light micrograph; it’s a fluorescent image of a specially prepared plant where various parts of the cell were labeled with tags to make them glow. However, this kind of cellular complexity and beauty is all around us, whether we can see it or not.
You could find cells just as intricately patterned and beautifully formed in any plant you looked at – from the rose in your backyard, to the grass growing up through the sidewalk, to the carrots you ate for a snack. Let’s not limit it to plants, either: exquisite layers of cells can be found in your skin, in an insect’s wing, and in just about any other living tissue you choose to look at. We, and the world around us, are cathedrals made of cells. We just need some microscopy to appreciate it.

Microscopes and lenses

Although cells vary in size, they’re generally quite small. For instance, the diameter of a typical human red blood cell is about eight micrometers (0.008 millimeters). To give you some context, the head of a pin is about one millimeter in diameter, so about 125 red blood cells could be lined up in a row across the head of a pin. With a few exceptions, individual cells cannot be seen with the naked eye, so scientists must instead use microscopes (micro- = “small”; -scope = “to look at”) to study them. A microscope is an instrument that magnifies objects otherwise too small to be seen, producing an image in which the object appears larger. Most photographs of cells are taken using a microscope, and these pictures can also be called micrographs.
From the definition above, it might sound like a microscope is just a kind of magnifying glass. In fact, magnifying glasses do qualify as microscopes; since they have just one lens, they are called simple microscopes. The fancier instruments that we typically think of as microscopes are compound microscopes, meaning that they have multiple lenses. Because of the way these lenses are arranged, they can bend light to produce a much more magnified image than that of a magnifying glass.
In a compound microscope with two lenses, the arrangement of the lenses has an interesting consequence: the orientation of the image you see is flipped in relation to the actual object you’re examining. For example, if you were looking at a piece of newsprint with the letter “e” on it, the image you saw through the microscope would be “ə." 1 More complex compound microscopes may not produce an inverted image because they include an additional lens that “re-inverts” the image back to its normal state.
What separates a basic microscope from a powerful machine used in a research lab? Two parameters are especially important in microscopy: magnification and resolution.
  • Magnification is a measure of how much larger a microscope (or set of lenses within a microscope) causes an object to appear. For instance, the light microscopes typically used in high schools and colleges magnify up to about 400 times actual size. So, something that was 1 mm wide in real life would be 400 mm wide in the microscope image.
  • The resolution of a microscope or lens is the smallest distance by which two points can be separated and still be distinguished as separate objects. The smaller this value, the higher the resolving power of the microscope and the better the clarity and detail of the image. If two bacterial cells were very close together on a slide, they might look like a single, blurry dot on a microscope with low resolving power, but could be told apart as separate on a microscope with high resolving power.
Both magnification and resolution are important if you want a clear picture of something very tiny. For example, if a microscope has high magnification but low resolution, all you’ll get is a bigger version of a blurry image. Different types of microscopes differ in their magnification and resolution.

Light microscopes

Most student microscopes are classified as light microscopes. In a light microscope, visible light passes through the specimen (the biological sample you are looking at) and is bent through the lens system, allowing the user to see a magnified image. A benefit of light microscopy is that it can often be performed on living cells, so it’s possible to watch cells carrying out their normal behaviors (e.g., migrating or dividing) under the microscope.
A light microscope, of the sort commonly found in high school and undergraduate biology labs.
Image credit: OpenStax Biology. Modification of work by "GcG"/Wikimedia Commons.
Student lab microscopes tend to be brightfield microscopes, meaning that visible light is passed through the sample and used to form an image directly, without any modifications. Slightly more sophisticated forms of light microscopy use optical tricks to enhance contrast, making details of cells and tissues easier to see.
Another type of light microscopy is fluorescence microscopy, which is used to image samples that fluoresce (absorb one wavelength of light and emit another). Light of one wavelength is used to excite the fluorescent molecules, and the light of a different wavelength that they emit is collected and used to form a picture. In most cases, the part of a cell or tissue that we want to look at isn't naturally fluorescent, and instead must be labeled with a fluorescent dye or tag before it goes on the microscope.
The leaf picture at the start of the article was taken using a specialized kind of fluorescence microscopy called confocal microscopy. A confocal microscope uses a laser to excite a thin layer of the sample and collects only the emitted light coming from the target layer, producing a sharp image without interference from fluorescent molecules in the surrounding layers4.

Electron microscopes

Some cutting-edge types of light microscopy (beyond the techniques we discussed above) can produce very high-resolution images. However, if you want to see something very tiny at very high resolution, you may want to use a different, tried-and-true technique: electron microscopy.
Electron microscopes differ from light microscopes in that they produce an image of a specimen by using a beam of electrons rather than a beam of light. Electrons have much a shorter wavelength than visible light, and this allows electron microscopes to produce higher-resolution images than standard light microscopes. Electron microscopes can be used to examine not just whole cells, but also the subcellular structures and compartments within them.
One limitation, however, is that electron microscopy samples must be placed under vacuum in electron microscopy (and typically are prepared via an extensive fixation process). This means that live cells cannot be imaged.
Images of Salmonella bacteria taken via light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Much more detail can be seen in the scanning electron micrograph.
Image credit: OpenStax Biology. Credit a: modification of work by CDC/Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Charles N. Farmer, Rocky Mountain Laboratories; credit b: modification of work by NIAID, NIH; scale-bar data from Matt Russell.
In the image above, you can compare how Salmonella bacteria look in a light micrograph (left) versus an image taken with an electron microscope (right). The bacteria show up as tiny purple dots in the light microscope image, whereas in the electron micrograph, you can clearly see their shape and surface texture, as well as details of the human cells they’re trying to invade.
Image of an electron microscope. It is very large, roughly the size of an industrial stove.
Image credit: OpenStax Biology. Modification of work by Evan Bench.
There are two major types of electron microscopy. In scanning electron microscopy (SEM), a beam of electrons moves back and forth across the surface of a cell or tissue, creating a detailed image of the 3D surface. This type of microscopy was used to take the image of the Salmonella bacteria shown at right, above.
In transmission electron microscopy (TEM), in contrast, the sample is cut into extremely thin slices (for instance, using a diamond cutting edge) before imaging, and the electron beam passes through the slice rather than skimming over its surface5. TEM is often used to obtain detailed images of the internal structures of cells.
Electron microscopes, like the one above, are significantly bulkier and more expensive than standard light microscopes, perhaps not surprisingly given the subatomic particles they have to handle!

Want to join the conversation?

  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user inuyashamonkey
    i was reading a question about where human samples come from, and i was wondering why the cells die when they get into the vacuum.
    (34 votes)
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    • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Alex
      Cells die upon entering a vacuum because a vacuum is a void. This means that there is nothing there. There is no air, just the absence of matter. In the absence of matter, a cell cannot survive. Plus, a cell in a multicellular organism cannot survive on its own for long, anyway.
      (31 votes)
  • starky tree style avatar for user Pran Ram
    When Was The Electron Microscope invented ?
    (13 votes)
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  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user Spoonie
    Why is an objective lens called that?
    (9 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user baileyw24
    How many microscopes are made per year, both types of the electron microscopy. Who produces and, or make them with what foundation.
    (9 votes)
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    • mr pink red style avatar for user DMS_HK
      The production and distribution of microscopes, especially electron microscopes, can vary from year to year and depend on several factors. While I don't possess the exact figures for the current year, I can provide you with some general information.

      Electron microscopes are typically produced by various manufacturers around the world. Some prominent companies known for manufacturing electron microscopes include JEOL, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Carl Zeiss AG, Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation, and FEI Company, among others.

      These manufacturers often collaborate with various foundations, research institutions, and academic organizations to develop and manufacture electron microscopes. Additionally, there are government-funded initiatives and independent research institutes that contribute to the advancements in microscope technology and their wide availability.

      It's important to note that the production numbers may vary significantly each year due to market demands, technological advancements, and research funding. To get specific figures for a particular year or detailed information about the production and distribution process, it would be best to consult industry reports, companies' annual reports, or contact the respective manufacturers directly.
      (14 votes)
  • leafers seed style avatar for user Daniel Kayode
    what is a light microscope
    (7 votes)
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    • old spice man green style avatar for user Matt B
      A light microscope is the typical microscope you would use at home: you simply observe something as it is using regular ilght.
      Other more specific and advanced microscopes might use electro-magnetic radiation that is not in the visible spectrum, such as electron microscope, but these images are not something you can detect by eye without proper machinery assistance.
      (14 votes)
  • winston baby style avatar for user Leo D
    how much can the most powerful electron microscope magnify?
    (3 votes)
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  • sneak peak blue style avatar for user connergirl05
    does time exist in perfect void?
    (4 votes)
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    • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user AuroraAlberts
      The void contains no space, no time, no mass, and no charge.

      I see it kinda like this:

      On Earth, one minute is 60 seconds. But on Mars, it is different. Same as all the other planets, because we tell the time via how we revolve around the sun, and how fast our planet is spinning. So if there were no sun and you weren't on a planet, there would be no time.

      Time is a relative concept with no absolute, and is used as a guide to measure events in various ways. With gravity and possibly voids, all they do is slow the event down, not time.

      So if you were an astronaut in space, you would only know how "old" you are if someone Earth were to tell you what the time is!
      (11 votes)
  • leaf green style avatar for user drew.browning
    Why is wave length the limiting factor?
    (3 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user Katrina Zub
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to the formula for resolution, the smaller the wavelength the better the resolution. That being said the shortest wavelength for visible light is blue at 450nm. Anything shorter our eye cannot capture.
      (14 votes)
  • leafers seedling style avatar for user Sondra C.
    can they still use the dead cells and can they get living cells from dead people?
    (2 votes)
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    • female robot ada style avatar for user Shannon
      And for the second question, it would depend on how you classify a "dead" person. Some countries pronounce a person dead if their heart stops, whereas others have it as when there is no activity in the frontal lobe (of the brain). Any sample from a dead person would have to be taken very shortly after their "death", as the cells start to die (or are already dead) within minutes. You may, depending on the circumstance and whether they are "dead" when their heart ceases functioning, be restricted to what sample of living cells you can retrieve. If you somehow access the heart very soon after "death", you may stand a chance at getting a sample, although I do not recommend trying to do any of this as it is a: rather suspicious, and b: you may be required to commence cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). This is all quite hypothetical, and don't try any of this, please.
      (11 votes)
  • leaf orange style avatar for user Sameer Kumble
    which is the world's smallest cell?
    (4 votes)
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