LOOK AT 'EM GO: The LOCOMOTIS microscopy rig includes three inexpensive microscopes, each mounted below a sample in a dish. Software records data coming in from the three scopes simultaneously. A heated cable in the sample chamber allows for temperature manipulation.© GEORGE RETSECK
Adam Lynch, a doctoral student at Brunel University London, studies the effects of waterway pollutants on the physiology of the freshwater snail Biomphalaria glabrata. As part of his thesis, he planned to observe—using time-lapse imaging—how a variety of chemicals affect the motility of the snail’s immune cells.
To perform such imaging, researchers traditionally placed a cell culture dish on an inverted microscope and took photos with a software-driven digital camera at regular time intervals. To look at several experimental conditions in parallel—which Lynch hoped to do—would thus require several microscopes, or an automated stage fitted to one microscope that enabled precision movements of a multiwell culture dish.
Lynch did not have access to either, but he did have access to the Internet. There he bought ...
