Image of the Day: Calcium Signaling

Researchers used light-sheet microscopy to form 3-D images of the process in primary cortical neurons from embryonic rats.

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Calcium signaling in primary cortical neurons from embryonic rats imaged in 3-D with parallelized light-sheet microscopyK.M. DEAN ET AL.

To acquire an image of calcium signaling, Reto Fiolka, a cell biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, illuminated primary cortical neurons from embryonic rats with three separate light sheets using fluorescence microscopy. Each light sheet was detected independently, and they were combined to produce a 3-D image of calcium signaling. The novel technology allows the visualization of rapid microscopic events in three dimensions, and the researchers also used it to demonstrate other intracellular and biological processes.

K.M. Dean et al., “Imaging subcellular dynamics with fast and light-efficient volumetrically parallelized microscopy,” Optica, doi:10.1364/OPTICA.4.000263, 2017.

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