Image of the Day: Lego Microscopy

With open-source software and Lego hardware, researchers have created a low-cost, automated method for cellular fluorescence microscopy.

Written byThe Scientist
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Kidney cells from a monkey labelled with UtrCH-GFP (pre-fixation) and Phalloidin-AF647 (post-fixation)ALMADA & PEREIRA ET AL.

In a preprint published in bioRxiv on Monday (May 14), researchers describe an open-source system that can create multimodal fluorescence imaging of cells. In the study, they snapped images and videos of cells derived from monkey kidney tissue. The system includes ImageJ-based software and hardware built with Lego bricks.

P. Almada et al., “Automating multimodal microscopy with NanoJ-Fluidics,” bioRxiv, doi:10.1101/320416, 2018.

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