Laboratory

SPIM is a kind of microscopy of single plane illumination, characterized by its ultrafine light beam that illuminates the sample perpendicularly to the observation objective, allowing generation of images of different sections of the sample, which get integrated to generate a 3D image. This emerging technique, besides being cheaper than confocal microscopy, allows a fast acquisition of images and minimizes sample damaging because of photo-oxidation. This is one of the few microscopes manufactured in MIP type lab in Latin America and with international technical support.

TIRF (total internal reflection fluorescence) microscopy is a fluorescence microscopy method where excitation light is confined to a small area of the interface between the cover slip and the sample. TIRF allows obtaining images of single molecules of nanometric scale. A pre-requisite for TIRF microscopy is that there must be a setup of adhesion of the sample to the glass surface. TIRF can be used to obtain images of small structures or individual molecules. The equipment has been used to observe vesicles made with synthetic lipids and monitor the fluctuations of the lipid in the membrane, cell growth under given antibiotic stress or biofilms of pathogen bacteria, among other research projects lead by our lab.