Scanning ion conductance microscopy of living kidney epithelial cells over 24 hour period

This is a video sequence taken by scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM), a relatively new SPM technique now commercially available from ionscope Ltd. One of the significant benefits of SICM is high resolution imaging of live cells. The video clip is a sequence of images from amphibian renal cells (A6 cells) taken over a 24 hour period. During the sequence, you can see how the ridge structures are formed on the epithelial kidney cells. Individual microvilli emerge along side one another and gradually merge building up extended ridges. Capturing these dynamic processes at this resolution for an extended time frame would be difficult or impossible to achieve with other microscopy techniques. The scan area of this taken during this sequence is 40 microns x 40 microns. This scan area size is comparable to conventional SPM techniques, but with living cells at higher resolution.

This video sequence is courtesy of ionscope Ltd. Nanounity is the U.S. representative for ionscope.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• SICM
• ionscope
• nanounity
• epithelial cells
• A6 cells
• SPM
• AFM
• biological AFM
• confocal microscopy