Welcome!

You're plugging away at your research project and examining some new aspects of the cell cycle and cell division. For this next portion of your project, your supervisor has asked you to understand these processes in greater detail, and they’ve asked that you learn how to use a fluorescent microscope*.

A fluorescence microscope will allow you to examine very specific structures in your cells by using special molecules called fluorophores. Briefly, by shining light of a certain wavelength onto a cell (i.e. a sample or specimen), you can stimulate a fluorophore to emit light at another wavelength, which is captured by the microscope. These fluorophores can be attached to molecules that bind specific structures in the cell, like microtubules, kinetochores, and centrosomes. This fluorophore-molecule combination is used to label or stain our cells. Typically, the safest number of fluorophores that can be used on a specimen is usually three, so you’ll be able to treat a specimen and observe three separate structures in a tissue. 

*You won’t need to understand fluorescence microscopy beyond what is described.