This is a step-by-step hand holding, descriptive, illustrated picture guide to creating your fluorescence microscope with a smartphone, LEDs, and common parts. 😎 This approach was inspired by the students and professor at Winona State University, WI who published “A low-cost smartphone fluorescence microscope for research, life science education, and STEM outreach” in Nature. This guide builds on their proof of concept, to try and make it clear how to calibrate and adapt to a wide range of fluorescent proteins and handle the autofluorescence of plant tissues.
(L) DIY LED + fiber optic cable + theater gel setup to illuminate TagRFP proteins in e. coli bacteria (R)
Time / Scheduling:
Start → End: Days (waiting for LEDs and components to ship)
Focused Lab Work: ~2 Hour
| Stage | Time/Days | Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1: Evaluating Proteins & Components | 1~2 hours | |
| Stage 2: Ordering Parts | ??? days | |
| Stage 3: Setting Up Our Fluorescent Tool | ~1 hour |
Steps:
Build a Simple Smartphone Microscope to Illuminate Fluorescent Proteins in Microbes and Plants
(L) Plant root tips creating (aka expressing) fluorescent proteins. (R) Plant leaf & zebra fish expression.
A tool in every microbiologists tool belt are the visual cues that fluorescent proteins provide. Often when you’re doing genetic work (in my case, wanting insulin to be created in marchantia plants), you provide extra genetic code for a fluorescent protein so you have a fast indicator early in cell growth.
However, the problem is that fluorescent microscopes that make these indicators visible cost $5,000.
This is when I came across the Glow-Scope paper suggesting a way to do this with low-cost LEDs and theater lighting gels. I wanted to remix their approach so there could be more flexibility and control on the light source’s wavelength, and so it can be put together without any power tools.
<aside> ⚠️ FYI: This is a proof of concept that I’m still refining to work with plant tissue. This guide was made as a stepping stone, so you could run with the idea yourself and also learn a bit about the physics and chemistry of light photons. We’re doing this on the cheap, so I am unsure where we will see limitations.
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