Wei put in many, many, many hours this year on various microscopes to characterize the types of microbes living in our lakes.
Wei working in one of the two microscopy suites in Crary Labs. This microscope is called an Inverted Microscope. Wei can put thicker slides or sample holders in this microscope because the lenses are underneath the sample, rather than over the sample (like most compound microscopes the people are probably familiar with.
Wei working in one of the two microscopy suites in Crary Labs. This microscope is called an Inverted Microscope. Wei can put thicker slides or sample holders in this microscope because the lenses are underneath the sample, rather than over the sample (like most compound microscopes the people are probably familiar with.
Wei uses a modified glass pipette to pick up single cells from under the microscope. Not an easy task! The cells are 5 to 20 micro-meters in size and Wei's pipette is more than 100 micro-meters in diameter, which is still pretty small, but gigantic compared to his cells!
Plenty of Interesting Microbes for Team Protist!
A cluster of protist cells from Lake Bonney water. The bottom image was taken under epifluorescence microscropy. The red colour comes from chlorophyll fluorescence, indicating that the cells are photosynthetic.
Wei's favorite Beasty. We don't know what this is yet, but we think it's a dinoflagellate.
Another mystery microbe. This one is probably in the procces of digesting another photosynthetic protist