Imaging

In some cases it is essential to keep cells or tissue alive and intact while imaging as the cell-processing used in immunofluorescence techniques destroys the feature of interest, causes its redistribution or loss on washing. It may also be convenient to avoid such cell processing when the feature of interest is tagged with a fluorescent protein (e.g. GFP). Cell-permeant fluorescent DNA dyes can be used as a counterstain.

A fluorescent viability probe can be utilized to evaluate sample integrity, cell death or apoptosis in live-endpoint assays.

Live non-adherent cells, micro-tissues or motile organisms may require immobilisation to permit reliable and high-performance imaging of structures and changes.

Organisms such as zebrafish and drosophila embryos, C. elegans and parasites are useful subjects for imaging but their high motility means that they require immobilization to gain useful information.

The onward growth or orthogonal analysis after imaging requires gentle and easy recovery from the immobilizing agent.