Microscopy

Microscopy of Elodea pond weed, showing chloroplast and organelle movement 10/12/2019

Posted by Andrew Thornett

Bright field

Live, unstained/unfixed

Andy

Firstly, an explanation about what is happening below:

From https://www.howplantswork.com/2010/04/25/chloroplast-movement-in-plant-cells-stirring-the-pot-avoiding-the-sun/

Movement of chloroplasts around the cell is called cyclosis or cytoplasmic streaming. Other organelles such as mitochondria are also streaming, along with the chloroplasts. This movement is on intracellular tracks called microfilaments, composed of actin proteins. The organelles are attached to the actin filaments by myosin, a motor protein. These proteins transform the chemical energy in ATP into mechanical energy leading to change in protein conformation and the protein molecule “walks” down the actin filament.

In leaf cells under bright sunlight, chloroplasts may have the ability to “move into the shade” of other chloroplasts, called photorelocation. Chloroplasts gather in areas irradiated with weak light to maximize photosynthesis (the accumulation response), and move away from areas irradiated with strong light to minimize damage of the photosynthetic apparatus (the avoidance response). The processes underlying these chloroplast movements can be divided into three parts: photoperception, signal transduction, and chloroplast movement.

Photos:

x40 objective:

x100 oil objective:      

Video:

x40 objective:

x100 oil objective:

Insect casts on flower pot in kitchen

Posted by Andrew Thornett

My wife asked me what the white fluff was on the side of a plant pot in our kitchen……it turned out to be insect casts from an infestation of the plant that eventually killed it – we quickly got rid of the plant and sterilised the pot and area!

Leitz Labourlux 11 microscope, bright field, no staining.

Bresser Microcam 5.0 camera.

Andy

x4 objective:

x10 objective:

x40 objective:

Fish fin Mikrocam 5-0 Leitz Laborlux 11 011219-0005.png

Posted by Andrew Thornett

Unprocessed, unstained photos of section of fish fin from Sea Bass.

Black and yellow pigment is visible – as magnification increases it can be seen that the pigment is not neatly laid out but looks almost as though someone has thrown ink out of end of pen onto the fin! Pigment is produced by pigment-producing cells so this must reflect the distribution of those cells in the fin.

Andy

x4 objective:

x10 objective:

x20 objective:

x40 objective:

Wild Sea Bass Fish scale x20 objective Mikrocam 5-0 Leitz Laborlux 11 011219

Posted by Andrew Thornett

These are unstained, unprocessed images, contrast improved using the condensor on the microscope rather than processing.
I presume the grooves enable better water flow around the fish so that it swims more effectively and efficiently. A scale is made of dead skin cells but I don’t know how big those initial cells were and hence what sort of scale the cellular size is in this image.
Taking these photos encouraged me to start researching fish scales online – there is a massive amount of information and it is interesting to see how it matches the photos I have taken here!
Andy

Microscopy stagnant pool Hopwas Woods (next to canal) 17/9/2019

Posted by Andrew Thornett

My god-son Laurence and I went for a walk next to the canal at Hopwas Woods near Lichfield today and took a water sample from a stagnant pool next to the canal.

Images below with 100x oil immersion lens (with immersion oil), Bresser MicroCam SP 5.1 camera.

Stained with H&E stain, heat fixation.

I used Registax 6 to stack video files and GIMP to stretch the histogram – applying astronomy imaging techniques to microscopy!

Andy

We found this organism attached to a piece of vegetation – note the multiple linear structures along edge of its body – video below shows us changing focus through body of the organism – multiple blue dots are bright/dead pixels on camera – Oh what I wouldn’t give for a COOLED microscope camera!

Diatom skeleton showing structure in skeleton:

Microscopy Kingsbury Water Park Angella, Alan, Andrew 9/8/2019

Posted by Andrew Thornett

The three of us collected samples today from Kingsbury Water Park near M42 – weather was rather variable but we had great fun and shows what can be done with simple kit

Andy

Alan & Andrew at Kingsbury Water Park:

Feather, using Alan and Angella’s own ex-school binocular microscope:

Alan and Angella’s pictures of vegetative matter from pool under Leitz microscope with x10 and x20 objectives: