Posts Tagged ‘mirrored pyramidal wells’
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A fluorescent image taken with a mirrored pyramidal well shows the top and four sides of a sunflower pollen grain at the same time.
VANDERBILT (US)—A periscope no wider than a human hair is yielding 3D images at the microscopic level and offering scientists an unprecedented look at cells and very small organisms from multiple vantage points—top, bottom, and all sides—like the single grain of pollen from a sunflower pictured here.
Chris Janetopoulos, part of the team at Vanderbilt University that developed the tiny devices, says viewing the top and sides of cells is a perspective biologists “almost never see.”
“The method is particularly well suited for studying dynamic processes within cells because it can follow them in three dimensions,” says Janetopoulos. The Vanderbilt researchers are using the micropyramids to examine how protozoa swim and how cells divide. Continue…
