Microscopy Solutions for Cell Culture

Biomedical research on living cells was revolutionized in 1934 when the Dutch physicist Frits Zernike described the concept of phase contrast. Within two years ZEISS was applying Zernike's original design in the first prototype phase contrast microscopes. This contrasting technique, which would earn Zernike the Nobel Prize for physics in 1953, is still the method of choice for many cell biologists today as it is ideal for thin unstained specimens such as culture cells on glass or plastic.

Cell culture studies are important in many research areas, ranging from cell biology, pharma, biotechnology, to cell therapy and regenerative medicine. Cell culture, also called tissue culture, deals with the growth of cells in culture media outside the organism in an artificial environment (in vitro). It encompasses the cultivation of adherent cells, suspension cells, primary cells, stem cells, bacteria, fungi, or plant cells. The latter are sometimes more precisely referred to as microbial culture, fungal culture or plant tissue culture, respectively.

Model organisms and immortalized cell lines are often used for studying the biology of cells or tissues. Prominent examples are summarized in the table.

1857 ZEISS sells his first compound microscope

Prokaryotes
Bacteria	Escherichia coli (E. coli), Bacillus subtilis
Eukaryotes
Protists	Dictyostelium discoideum
Fungi	Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast), Schizosaccharomyces pombe (fission yeast)
Plant	Tobacco BY-2 cells, Rice (Oryza sativa), Arabidopsis thaliana
Animal cell lines	CHO (Chinese hamster ovary), COS-7 (green monkey kidney), PC12 (rat adrenal medulla), dog MDCK (Madin-Darby canine kidney)
Human cell lines	HeLa (cervical cancer), U2OS (bone osteosarcoma), HEK 293 (embryonic kidney), MCF-7 (breast cancer), Hep G2 (liver cancer)

Model organisms and cell lines that are often used in cell culture

Such cell lines are cultured in special vessels such as Petri dishes, flasks or multiwell plates. Culture media containing nutrients and optional supplements provide the necessary conditions for optimized cell growth. Depending on the type of cell, a certain temperature, humidity, and CO2 and O2 level must be used to best mimic the in vivo conditions. Most mammalian cell lines are cultured in an incubator at 37° C and 5 % CO2 atmosphere.

Microscope Requirements

Cell culture labs use microscopes on an everyday basis to examine cell growth or cell proliferation as well as cell vitality. This includes checking the cell confluency level, whether the cell morphology looks normal, if a contamination is present, and when the culture medium needs to be exchanged. These tasks most commonly require phase contrast microscopy at 50x – 200x magnification. You will need to be quick to minimize the time outside the incubator. Therefore, your cell culture microscope should be compact to fit inside a laminar flow cabinet or on a lab bench in short distance to the incubator. A simple and user-friendly microscope leads to fast turnaround times and minimizes the strain on the cells. Once the cells reach a certain confluency level, they need to be passaged. Before transferring them to a new culture vessel, use a cell counter or a counting chamber such as a Makler chamber to define the cell number, then calculate an appropriate dilution factor. Good cell culture practice is essential since this provides the basis for meaningful and reproducible results in your research.

Many other microscopy procedures are carried out in cell culture labs. Typical assays include the scratch or wound healing assay, live-dead assay and the transwell or translocation assay. Apart from phase contrast and brightfield observation, fluorescence is often used and is becoming a standard. Proteins in cells or tissues can be labeled with immunofluorescence markers. Various fluorophores – among them, DAPI, Hoechst, GFP, Alexa 488, RFP, Texas Red and Cy3 – let you differentiate and locate the signals using multichannel fluorescence microscopy.

On the other hand, living cells can be transfected (by viral or non-viral transfection) with foreign DNA or RNA to express, for example, fluorescent proteins. This process can be quite tedious if you need a stable transfection so fluorescence microscopy is very useful here. Expression level and transfection efficiency are key indicators during this procedure. Gentle fluorescence visualization and imaging can be achieved best using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Phototoxic effects originating from unwanted ultraviolet (UV) light are reduced compared to other fluorescence illumination sources such as mercury arc lamps. In addition, LEDs offer a significantly increased lifetime and are maintenance-free.

Applications

HeLa cells transfected with GFP expression plasmid

Brightfield – tobacco protoplasts acquired with Axiovert

U2OS cells imaged in live cell culture, GFP Actin stained.

HeLa cells in phase contrast - acquired with Primovert

Human astrocytes.

Phasecontrast – lactobacillus casei acquired with Axiolab

MDCK cells (dog) after short incubation period, acquired with Axio Observer

Recommended Microscope Systems for Cell Culture :

ZEISS Primovert
Especially designed for the routine assessment of cell cultures, this easy-to-use inverse microscope combines efficiency with optical performance. Primovert is compact and can be used directly in your sterile biosafety cabinet. It offers a quick and efficient way to examine unstained cells in phase contrast and GFP-labeled cells in fluorescent contrast.

Combine Primovert HDcam with the Labscope imaging app for iPad and you will have an integrated imaging system that makes it easy to observe and document cells, even from outside the sterile workplace .

Your Compact Inverted Routine Microscope for Cell Culture

ZEISS Axio Vert.A1

This is the ideal instrument for cell culture laboratories. Easy-to-use, ergonomic and compact, it fits into your lab even when space is tight. Apart from routine assessments of cell cultures in phase contrast, it supports advanced contrasting techniques such as DIC or PlasDIC. Axio Vert.A1 is particularly strong when it comes to routine fluorescence observation and documentation such as determining transfection efficiency. The stable and maintenance-free fluorescence LED illumination, combined with the high optical performance of the microscope system, allows you to visualize even faint fluorescence signals clearly. Team it up with Axiocam 202 mono and Labscope, and multichannel fluorescence documentation will become quicker, more efficient and very easy.

Simply Get All Information From Your Cells

ZEISS Labscope

This intuitive routine imaging app from ZEISS lets you snap images of your cultured cells in transmitted light and fluorescence, and record videos easier than ever before. Labscope provides simple manual measurement possibilities for analyzing your samples— distance and area measurements as well as manual counting. It also makes quick work of generating reports containing images and measurement results. Use it with a Windows PC with mouse and keyboard, a Windows tablet with touchscreen or an iPad: Labscope is the all-round imaging app for connected microscopes in your lab.

Your Easy-to-Use Imaging App for Connected Microscopes