Posted On: Saturday, October 17, 2015
October 2015
Dr. Robert Mitchell, our first KEY Award winner, has been quick to put his new Stereo Microscope Fluorescence Adapter (SFA) system to good use. He sent us these images of fluorescent dye fills of nerves in the brain of the palo verde beetle, Derobrachus hovorei. The first photo below shows this rather large beetle. He injected the antennal nerve with Lucifer yellow (green fluorescence) to highlight the olfactory center (photos 2 and 3) and the maxillary nerve with micro-Ruby (red fluorescence) to highlight the gustatory center (photo 4). He used the SFA’s Royal Blue excitation/emission set to excite and image the green fluorescence and the Green set to excite and image the red fluorescence.
(click any image for larger view)
In his post-doc at the University of Arizona, Dr. Mitchell had routine access to a confocal microscope. There is no confocal at his new institution, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and he faced a 90 mile drive (each way) to UW Madison for imaging. One of his main goals in applying for the KEY Award was to acquire his own fluorescence capability so that he could at least pre-screen his samples before making the drive. Once Rob tried out the SFA he said:
‘It blew me away. The fluorescence from my samples comes through so well that I think I can go a long way with just this system and my dissection ‘scope. Admittedly these are brains of an extraordinarily large beetle but the neurons are quite clear on low power, and I think fills of even the smallest beetle brains will be easily visible. This will save a lot of time, money, and travel headaches in the future.’
Read our application note on using the SFA for fluorescence pre-screening.