The Advanced Microscopy & Imaging core facility houses a PIXCELL II laser capture microscope (Arcturus Engineering) that can be used to microdissect small clusters of cells, or even single cells, for use in DNA, RNA or protein analyses. Cells can be dissected from embedded tissue sections that have been stained with H&E, a special stain, or even an immunostain.
Laser Capture Microscopy Procedure: The procedure is simple and rapid. Training time is less than one hour, and a trained user can dissect from one to several thousand cells within a matter of minutes.
The PIXCELL II scope has an integrated digital image capture unit, allowing one to record "before" and "after" images of the dissected cells. In the example shown below, a pure population of tumor cells were dissected away from whole biopsy.
