Tutorial: How to do “in-situ” live imaging of plant leaf cells without damaging a plant

Dec 26, 2017 • 10:10 PM UTC

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Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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Usually, the most creative (and difficult) process of live imaging is discovering how to grow/keep alive whatever you want to image under a glass slide. This is not trivial, since organisms sense local environment which has a dramatic effect on the sample.
In the latest design, we coupled a new way to mount live plant samples – by magnetically coupling leaves so you can image stomatal dynamics. Here is a quick tutorial video to do the same. Depending on what you are imaging, it’s helpful to have light on maximum intensity (without diffuser). If the image is not focused; play with the new ramp.
The real thrill of this is when you can setup time lapse; go to sleep and watch a leaf grow when you wake up in the morning. Just setting it up; will update tomorrow on the same.
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Just some quick observations. I find it remarkable how much the cellular geometry changes with every few millimeters.