What is Fluorescence Microscopy?

About Fluorescence Microscopy:

• A fluorescence microscope views an object by studying how it re¬emits light that it has absorbed, i.e., how it fluoresces. This is its basic principle.
• How it works?
  • The object is illuminated with light of a specific wavelength.
  • Particles in the object absorb this light and re¬emit it at a higher wavelength (i.e., different color). These particles are called fluorophores.
  • The object is infused with fluorophores before being placed under the microscope.
  • When the fluorophores fluoresce, a fluorescent microscope can track them as they move inside the object, revealing the object’s internal shape and other characteristics.
• Scientists have developed different fluorophores to identify and study different entities, from specific parts of the DNA to protein complexes.
• Applications of Fluorescence Microscope:
  • It is used to image specific features of small specimens such as microbes.
  • It is also used to visually enhance 3-D features at small scales.
  • It allows the use of multicolor staining, labeling of structures within cells, and the measurement of the physiological state of a cell.
  • It is the most popular method for studying the dynamic behavior exhibited in live-cell imaging.
  • Different molecules can now be stained with different colors, allowing multiple types of molecules to be tracked simultaneously.

What is Optical Microscopy?

• An optical microscope, also known as a light microscope, views an object by studying how it absorbs, reflects, or scatters visible light.
• It uses one or a series of lenses to magnify images of small samples with visible light.
• The lenses are placed between the sample and the viewer’s eye to magnify the image so that it can be examined in greater detail.

 

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Q1) What is Transmission electron microscopy (TEM)?

Transmission electron microscopes (TEM) are microscopes that use a particle beam of electrons to visualize specimens and generate a highly-magnified image. TEMs can magnify objects up to 2 million times.

Source: Scientists devise ‘glowscope’ to bring fluorescent microscopy to schools