Location

Now the microscope is located in the iPSC room in the building 329.
How to get there: ground floor, first entrance from the corridor to the left, then to the right side of the teaching lab, 051 room, close to the chemical hood and the gel detection device.

Maintenance

Please bring a fresh lab coat or use the ones on the hooks inside the room. Always wear gloves when possible. Try to minimise bringing samples/consumables to the room. Please wipe the microscope plate before and after with 80% EtOH (to not get cross-contaminations with the cell culture work).

Accessing the resource

Room is used by us and Duarte-Campos colleagues. To check the EVOS availability, please, use the Google calendar. If it's booked saying “EVOS” or “Alignment” or “Russ and Oscar” (for a while, like several hours), it means the EVOS will be occupied. But that happens rarely, approximately once a month.

Usually it's ok to come without booking for a short time, you can also always come while I use the room (“Sasha” in the calendar). If you're planning to use the EVOS for a while - please book it in the calendar. To get the access to the Calendar, please, write to Dr. Russell Quinn r.quinn@zmbh.uni-heidelberg.de, listing your gmail address.

If you have any further questions - feel free to talk to me (Aleksandra aka Sasha)

How to use the EVOS?

1. Turn on the microscope with the starting button in the back right side.
2. Position your cells/glass slide in the plate.
3. On the screen, you can select any of the channels (GFP,RFP,DAPI,TRANS) to start the LIVE observation.
4. To focus the microscope you can use options “coarse” and “fine” for an automated approach.
5. You can include a scale bar by selecting in the screen.
6. To take a picture, choose which channels you want next to capture and then press the button. Note the picture will combine the multiple into a single image so if you want individual channels you have to save them individually.
7. Transfer the data.
8. Remove your samples, clean the plate and turn off the equipment.

Data transfer

To transfer pictures collected with the EVOS you can use the designated USB-stick. This is stored in the EVOS microscope drawer in our lab space. Connect it to plug in the left side of the microscope, then in the screen move to the second window, select your folder of interest and click Export.

CAUTION: when transferring data from the USB stick do it through the wet-lab PC only!