Week One – Introduction to Light Microscopy and Biological Models

Monday talks

Because we are limited to six one hour lecture periods in this course the talks must focus on the most immediately important and time sensitive information. To cover all of the essential material we have placed full presentations with notes on line. Each weekly schedule page will describe essential background material. Some if it will be covered in a talk, however you are expected to peruse the material that cannot be presented in a lecture due to time constraints.

Today's talk

Prepare for a brief introduction to the course followed by a presentation on the biology of microtubules. The concepts of regulation by feedback inhibition and of steady states will be introduced. The talk will also introduce the first laboratory study, namely an experiment on regeneration of flagella by the organism Chlamydomonas.

On your own – before your laboratory session

• Prior to your laboratory session, please peruse the material under "Studies Employing the Light Microscope." Use the Next buttons to go through the material under Part 1, including introduction, introduction to the specimens, and details on the organisms that you will be seeing this week.
• Prepare an outline listing specimens to examine and what to observe. Include an estimate of the time you can spend on each specimen in order to complete all of the work.
• You must review the rules for safe conduct
• Quickly peruse the course "rules" for keeping a laboratory notebook. If you have a notebook that uses carbon paper, please detach it before coming in so that your notebook is ready for making copies

Items needed for the laboratory

• You will need laboratory goggles, a blank notebook, and a black marker (see the course syllabus, course description on line, or "read this first" for details)

Expectations – following the laboratory work

You MUST be prepared next week to recall the skills that you are taught and practice in the first laboratory session.

• be prepared to fix and stain samples of Chlamydomonas
• be able to prepare wet mounts of stained Chlamydomonas
• be prepared to quickly find stained cells in a microscope field, raise magnification, optimize contrast, observe and measure flagella

Pre-laboratory orientation (by instuctor)

• Starting and maintaining a laboratory notebook
• Tutorial – using a Nikon Labophot microscope
• light path and setting up
• using dark field
• raising magnification and using phase contrast
• How to prepare a vaseline mount (wet mount) slide and orientation to specimens to be examined

Laboratory work this week

This session will be devoted to learning how to use a Nikon Labophot compound light microscope equipped with dark field and phase contrast optics. You will practice observing a variety of living specimens, including Chlamydomonas reinhardi, the subject of next week's experiment. You will set up your laboratory notebook, recording your observations as you work.

At the end of this and every subsequent laboratory session you are to write a quick summary, bring your notebook to a teaching assistant to be examined and initialed, then remove and staple the duplicate pages. Turn in the stapled pages with your name on the first page.

Follow-up work

• We cannot have a talk next week because of the Monday holiday. Please review the materials under Part 2 of the Microscopy/Invertebrates section, starting with a description of the research paper.
• [Recommended] On your own, complete the tutorial on plotting data before completing prelab #1
• Prelab #1 is to be completed and submitted no later than midnight before your laboratory session week 2.