3D videos capturing inside of living cells
26 August 2024
Peter Mac scientists can now take 3D videos of the inside of living cells, capturing tiny details without damaging them.
A state-of the art microscope, the Zeiss Lattice Light Sheet 7, was recently installed in Peter Mac’s Centre for Advanced Histology and Microscopy (CAHM) – one of just a handful that exist in Australia.
Instead of shining light from above or below like regular microscopes, this one creates a very thin sheet of light - shining it through the sample from the side - in a special lattice pattern which helps to reduce the amount of light hitting the sample at once.
This is important because too much light can damage the cells or cause them to behave unnaturally.
The light sheet then moves back and forth across the sample, capturing images layer by layer. By scanning these thin layers, the microscope builds a detailed 3D picture of the inside of the cell.
Having used the microscope extensively through its first months at CAHM, Senior Research Assistant Jesse Rudd-Schmidt (above), from the Killer Cell Biology laboratory, says the availability of this machine to be used on a wide range of projects throughout Peter Mac Research is a very exciting step towards new discoveries.
“It’s as though every time you trial what seems like even a simple experiment on this system, you see something so unexpected and exciting, that it may later lead to the development of a new research project or hypothesis,” Jesse explains
“The ease of use is exceptional, and I think as the number of people using this microscope grows over time there will undoubtably be novel discoveries made by many different research groups.”
The above video, captured by Jesse, shows some time-lapse imaging of tumour cells expressing a fluorescent actin binding peptide, Lifeact-GFP (a tool that makes part of the cell's skeleton glow green so scientists can study how cells move and change shape).
The new microscope then takes pictures really quickly, allowing researchers to see live processes happening inside the cells, like how proteins move or how cells divide.
Since the light is gentle, the cells stay alive and healthy during the process and it doesn’t alter their behaviour, meaning dynamic cellular interactions can now be studied in more detail than ever before, furthering researchers’ understanding of biological processes.
The microscope was funded by the Barrie Dalgleish Centre for Multiple Myeloma and Related Blood Cancers.
For more information about Peter Mac's microscopy services, visit the Centre for Advanced Histology and Microscopy.