Fluorescent microscope in your space?

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Andrew Gray

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Sep 13, 2016, 6:30:49 AM9/13/16
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Hi all,
I'm curious to know if any of the diybio, biohacker, or community science spaces you're affiliated make use of fluorescent imaging/microscopy. I've come across some resources showing how various groups have put together low cost alternatives to fluorescent microscopes/equipment, including these.

Visualizing Fluorescence: Using a Homemade Fluorescence “Microscope” to View Latent Fingerprints on Paper

DIY spectrometer

In your opinion would something like this be helpful in your space or more of a "nice to have...one day" type of item? I ask because i'm doing a homework assignment on DIYbio spaces and fluorescent imaging which can be quite expensive.

Currently with 3D printing and laser cutting technologies, the costs for many of these seems like it could be reduced down to the cost of the objective lenses and filters/mirrors used. This could bring the cost down to the $500-$1,000 mark depending how how lucky you are to source low cost lenses. The filter sets seem to remain around the $180 and LED lighting sources are dirt cheap vs halogen lamps of olden days. You would need to purchase a new set of filters for every fluorescent wavelength range you intend on using. The housing for the filters (filter cube), turret for the objectives, and even microscope body could be designed and printed. You could replace the need for eye pieces perhaps using a cheap CMOS sensor coupled to Image J, running on an RPi. Another option would to buy a complete microscope second hand.

It is highly unlikely that some one would need a full set of fluro objectives and could even benefit from a single x100 or x60 fluro objective with which to perform experiments, still these can be a little pricey. The dyes are also relatively inexpensive ranging around the $50 mark, but if you're expressing fluorescent proteins obviously doesn't factor in to operating costs besides purchasing the DNA. 

So again, would having a piece of tech like this in the lab in your mind be useful on a regular basis if you had it?

Thanks all,

Andrew.

Abizar Lakdawalla

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Sep 13, 2016, 1:09:10 PM9/13/16
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Hi Andrew, a group at BioCurious in Sunnyvale CA is working on a high end fluorescence microscope. 
For LEDs you pretty much do not need an excitation filter but may need a narrow bandpass filter that would block the exciting light. An interesting approach I have seen is using one eyepiece of a binocular microscope head as a light source and the other eye piece for the camera (see attached image of the concept).
Thanks
Abizar

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Alt illumination method Fluor uscope.jpg

Andrew Gray

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Sep 15, 2016, 6:51:31 AM9/15/16
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Hi Abizar,
What a cool retrofit! I haven't seen that solution yet. One day i'll come check out the bay area to go see out what they're doing but am down in Aus at the moment. One day. It really doesn't look like you need a whole lot to make this happen, i'm currently looking into the types of cameras needed to be able to clearly resolve fluorescence coming off the samples. Would be interesting to see what other spaces are working on if they are. I haven't seen too much in the way of retrofitting and more people just hacking together something from scratch. Making use of what's already available is a great idea.
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