“If motorists drove their cars the way many cell biologists used their confocal microscopes, our highways would be littered with twisted wrecks of automobiles and the mangled corpses of run-over pedestrians. Everyone recognizes that driving a car is a tricky procedure(…) the fact is that a confocal microscope is probably at least as complicated to operate as a car.“ - Wallace Marshall, “Through a pinhole, darkly”

You probably know already that you need a “driver’s license” to operate each microscope at IMM. Training each user to become fully independent and a “safe driver” is our main goal at the BioImaging Unit. As in driving schools, we sit by your side and teach you what the buttons do, when to go ahead and when to brake, ultimately how to avoid crashing into a bleached sample or even worse, into the sample itself. Pressing buttons is of course only half of what you need to know. The other half is knowing what is happening inside the microscope when you press that button. Did you ever wonder what a pinhole really is? Do you want to know how to choose filters and dichroics instead of just re-using some “magical” settings? Do you want to know what happens to light inside a widefield and a confocal, and which one of them you really need? Then this NanoCourse is for you. You will become familiar with both basic microscopy techniques and more advanced 3D microscopy and live imaging during two intensive afternoon sessions. Whether you are a beginning or intermediate microscope user, you will have the chance to learn all the relevant background in fluorescent widefield and confocal microscopy as well as obtain practical information on how to efficiently prepare samples, acquire data and obtain publication quality images.

Instituto de Medicina Molecular

Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa Av. Professor Egas Moniz 1649-028 Lisboa, Portugal

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