Despite its importance in the regulation of many cellular processes, membrane tension is still complicated to measure. And despite valuable insights, the techniques currently available remain complex and present technical limitations. To overcome these drawbacks, Spirochrome have developed the first probe for fluorescence microscopy in the field of mechanobiology, that specifically targets the plasma membrane of cells and reports membrane tension through changes in its fluorescence lifetime : the Flipper-TR^® probe.

Live Cell Imaging has transformed the way biologists study cellular functions and processes. The observation of dynamic changes provides more insight into the processes happening in a cell, as compared to imaging studies of fixed cells. Goryo Chemical have developed a broad range of innovative Live Cell Imaging fluorescent probes for various applications. Let’s take a closer look…

Understanding how mammalian cells function requires a dynamic perspective. Recent improvements in our abilities to perform fluorescence microscopy on primary cells, coupled with advances in pipelines for quantifying and extracting data, have made possible a better understanding of the temporal complexity of cell signalling pathway. Due to the heterogeneity seen in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell populations, study at the single cell resolution with living cells is currently the best solution to understand the dynamics between environmental conditions and cellular behaviour.

However as living cells don’t stay still, classical imaging and studying methods present some drawbacks for single cell analysis and tracking such as:

One of the biggest challenges as a researcher in life sciences, is to obtain proof of concept the more predictive as possible. To help you to reach your objectives, many innovative tools are being developed and new techniques are emerging. In this post, I’d like to essentially focus on two innovative cell culture devices which mimic in-vivo conditions in in-vitro systems, in fields such as 3D cell culture, Microfluidics and oriented cell culture.