New microscopy platform

Zeiss has launched the Elyra 7 with Lattice SIM, a flexible platform for fast and gentle 3D superresolution. Lattice SIM expands the possibilities of structured illumination microscopy (SIM): illuminating the sample with a lattice pattern rather than grid lines gives higher contrast and allows a more robust image reconstruction. Scientists can use 2x higher sampling efficiency to lower the illumination dosage to observe fast cellular processes in superresolution. High image quality is maintained even at high frame rates.

Lattice SIM enables fast imaging of 3D volumes with up to 120nm laterally. Thanks to greater light efficiency, the new technology provides scientists with gentle superresolution imaging of living specimens with 255 frames per second. Using less light to illuminate the specimen means scientists can image longer with less bleaching of the sample. The novel technology allows new mechanistic details to be uncovered and the finest subcellular structures in large fields of view to be quantified. 

Elyra 7 can be expanded with single molecule localisation microscopy (SMLM) for techniques such as PALM, dSTORM, and PAINT. The SMLM module delivers molecular resolution in large 3D volumes and powerful post-processing algorithms for quantification. Researchers choose freely among labels when imaging with resolutions down to 20 nm laterally. SMLM provides access to molecular mechanisms in both fixed and living specimens. Researchers can count molecules and come to understand, molecule-by-molecule, how individual proteins are arranged within a structural context. 

The new system is highly flexible: users profit from the wealth of options of a research grade, live cell microscope. They can expand their Elyra 7 with various contrasting techniques and combine them with optical sectioning. The new Apotome mode allows fast optical sectioning of 3D samples. The system also works seamlessly with Ziess SEMs in a correlative workflow. 

Life sciences research often requires you to measure, quantify and understand the finest details and sub-cellular structures of the sample. Scientists may be working with tissue, bacteria, organoids, neurons, living or fixed cells and many different labels. Elyra 7 takes them beyond the diffraction limit of conventional microscopy to image samples with superresolution. Researchers now examine the fastest processes in living samples – in large fields of view, in 3D, over long time periods, and with multiple colours.

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