Instrumental to Science - Seaver Lab

Published:

Instrumental to Science - Seaver Lab

“Everyone knows you need to have the right tool for the job.” — Mark Q. Martindale, UF Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, UF Explore 


The progress of science is dependent on its tools. Sometimes these instruments are super ‘high-tech’ – specialized equipment that allows us to peer into the inner workings of a cell, measure the mass of molecules, map out the nucleotides written in whole genomes, and more. Sometimes a research question requires tools that are not commercially available but that are so 'low-tech' you could make it yourself using everyday items from your local hardware store.

This series, 'Instrumental to Science', gives a sampling of these 'high' and 'low' technologies that help Whitney biologists tease apart some of the most basic questions in biology research.


Seaver Lab

 

HIGH TECH: LIVE IMAGING

 

Life as we know it begins with a single cell — an unassuming egg that, once fertilized, initiates a chain reaction that has been described as being “a bit like a lump of iron turning into the space shuttle.” Development at the cellular level is highly dynamic, where every molecular decision is crucial.

One trick to visualize these dynamic processes is to inject a single cell with a fluorescent dye, a technique known as lineage tracing. As the cell divides, the dye lights up each subsequent daughter cell, allowing researchers to track cell lineages as they develop into specific structures.

But these cells are tiny — roughly the diameter of an average strand of hair. That’s too small to see with the naked eye. Advanced microscopes open a window, so to speak, into those minute details.

The Whitney Lab utilizes several types of advanced microscopes, each one tailored to address specific scientific questions. This series will explore several of them, spotlighting their unique attributes. The video below is a time-lapse of an injected worm embryo during early development, taken on an Axioskop 2 plus Zeiss microscope in Dr. Elaine Seaver’s Lab.

Video: From Meyer & Seaver, 2010. ICB.


 

LOW TECH: HAIR LOOP AND EYELASH TOOLS

 

Eyelash hair tools

Alicia Boyd and Lauren Kunselman, both PhD candidates in the Seaver Lab, are devoted to learning how a local marine worm regenerates. Today, that devotion means giving up a strand of hair and an eyelash for science.

These worms, known in science circles as Capitella teleta, are tiny at larval and juveniles stages. To see them in any appreciable detail, they need to be mounted on glass slides and imaged on a microscope. Some time ago, the Seaver Lab developed a hair loop tool — a single strand of hair looped on the end of a glass pipette to hold a single juvenile worm in a tiny drop of water. This tool is helpful for moving tiny worm from a dish to microscope slides without damaging the worm.

Once on the slide, the worms may need to be reoriented to get the most informative picture or video from the microscope. But human fingers — gigantic compared to the worm — can be unwieldy. An eyelash superglued to a pipette tip is delicate enough to get the job done without smooshing the worm.

"They're really helpful for fine motor movements," says Boyd. "I especially like to use them for moving worms around on the slides, for separating larvae that got stuck together, and for cleaning gunk off of animals."

Eyelash Tools Hand holding eyelash tool