Video 1

Since foldscope is a portable microscope – you can easily choose the orientation you put it with respect to gravity. I have been collecting a lot of data sets with gravity pointing down – in order to explore how gravity impacts micro-organisms. Conventionally we image organisms in XY plane – so gravity is perpendicular to the slide. But now – I have the slide oriented XZ plane – so you see all the microscopic particles are falling down “slowly”.. waters viscosity slows down falling things – but you can clearly see that everything is falling down. But micro-organisms have the freedoms to swim and can generate forces against gravity. The question we have been exploring for many years now is how single cells sense, react to and interact with gravity.

For reading more on this – also see our work in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-0924-7

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/610246v1.abstract

Individual bacteria and single cell algae are clearly visible..

Cheers
Manu