Most comprehensive range of Live Cell Imaging tools
Visualizing fixed cells and tissues only gives snap shots of cellular processes. To get a better insight into dynamic processes in cells and interactions between cellular components, be it proteins or even organelles, more and more powerful microscopic tools have been developed over the past decade to image living cells.
In 2014 the Nobel price in chemistry was attributed to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”, methods which indeed opened a new age for Live Cell Imaging as well.
Besides elucidating basic cellular processes (e.g. the rearrangements of the cellular cytoskeleton), tools for visualizing specific parameters in living cells are crucial for measuring changes in the cytosolic composition, such as increases or decreases of ion concentrations. These fluorescent indicators are widely used in cell based assay screenings in drug discovery.
Over the past years, more and more cellular parameters have become measurable in living cells by using specific stains. These are capable of entering living cells and are non-toxic to avoid effects which would tamper with the parameters to be measured.
Live cell imaging stains can be used for organelles, for DNA, proteins such as actin and tubulin, or specific enzymes such as caspases, membrane and cytosolic lipids, or parameters such as ion concentration, temperature and intracellular pH.
