Plastid autofluorescence in Fissidens fontanus

[gconcepcion]

Was messing around with the fluorescent scope at work today and took some pictures of Fissidens fontanus at 400x magnification for the heck of it.





What you are looking at are the individual cells that comprise a leaf of Fissidens fontanus

The red coloration is the result of Chlorophyll A autofluorescence. The picture was taken @ 400X magnification. The sample was excited with a 50W Mercury arc lamp and resulting emission passed through a 600nm LP filter.

In both images you can distinguish individual cells with various epifauna on the older growth (various cyanobacteria; diatoms etc.)

Pretty cool looking stuff! Gonna try to do some nuclear staining tomorrow for the heck of it. Hopefully i'll have some more cool pics

[Chris]

Very Cool!!!

[scientist0724]

Very cool...I miss doing fluoresence microscopy...used to do it a long time ago in my former life...

Arlene

[marydotson]

The thing that strikes me is that I can see the width of a fissidens leaf with my bare eyes and on that photo, I can count that it's roughly 30 cells wide. 1/30th brings the cellular level down to a lot more tangible terms...

[krisw]

This is really impressive, Greg! So much so, that I think you ought to consider entering some of your photos in the Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition. The deadline is Sept 30th.

http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/

I like the first photo the best, but both are really interesting!

[gconcepcion]

This is really impressive, Greg! So much so, that I think you ought to consider entering some of your photos in the Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition. The deadline is Sept 30th.

http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/

I like the first photo the best, but both are really interesting!

Oh i'm already in

As are several other folks in my lab... I want to win a $5000 scope!

I have the best stuff reserved for the contest (misc. dinoflagellates stained with calcofluor for thecal plate visualization...)

here's a low quality one as a teaser. I'll post some more after the comp.

[krisw]

I should have figured you'd be on top of this already! Your teaser looks wonderful -- I can't wait to see the rest of them! Good luck in the contest!

[scientist0724]

Good luck with the competition. Olympus is a great company. Some of my microscopy images were used in one of their international ads back in '98 with some neurons that I stained and photographed. Looks like they have upped the ante over the years. Back then all I got was one of their first digital cameras. That thing was the size of a brick...LOL!

Arlene