Brunell scientists saves £1,000s with £160 DIY microscope

Scientist Adam Lynch was stuck for a piece of research equipment, so he made his own, saving thousands of pounds, and getting a research paper published on the instrument.

From Brunell University’s College of Health and Life Sciences, Lynch was studying cell movement and needed a microscope to look up at the cells through the bottom of a transparent container, or more than one container so test could be run in parallel.

“When you’re looking at motility in cells you’re only interested in the data – how fast the cell gets from A to B means more than a high-resolution image,” he said. “Even with a high-cost microscope you will reduce the image down so that it’s just a black dot on the screen moving against a white background so that it’s easier for a computer to read.”

Lynch bought three USB microscopes on-line – they tend to have 2Mpixel (1,600×1,200) resolution and 50-500x zoom magnification – and clamped them upside-down it under the samples.

“It worked ok as I could sort of see cells, which are about 50µm long, but the images weren’t fantastic,” he said. “But people don’t realise that you can quite easily make a high-magnification microscope, it’s just a matter of getting a lens and the right angle of lighting, so when I turned off the lighting that came with the instrument and used external lights I found I could see the cells quite clearly.”

Equally important was the availability of open-source tracking software to automate the analysis.

In the experimental rig, just over 200x magnification (out of ~400x max) and 640×480 resolution was used.

According to the paper’s abstract, confirmation of performance came from measuring mean velocities of 0.81, 1.17, 1.24, and 2.21µm/min for biomphalaria glabrata hemocytes (uncoated plate), MDA-MB-231 cancer cells, SC5 mouse Sertoli cells, and B. glabrata hemocytes (poly-L-Lysine coated plates) respectively, which ‘are consistent with previous reports’.

Lynch is studying snail immune systems – in particular, how chemical pollutants in water might influence the transmission of Schistosome parasites from snails to humans.

The microscope paper, ‘Low-cost motility tracking system (locomotis) for time-lapse microscopy applications and cell visualisation‘, is published by the Public Library of Science.

In the photo:

Three black USB cameras point up into the transparent acrylic incubator box.

At the back of the box is orange heating wire, controlled by the white rectangular thermostat.

Above the thermostat in the incubator is a temperature sensor, and light comes from an LED table lamp.

Cells live and move in the tray in the bottom right of the incubator.

For fine microscope height adjustment, each one sits on part of an adjustble kitchen cabinet leg.

steve bush

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