Live Cell Imaging

With various options available for treated or untreated cell culture surfaces, how do you choose the right one for your research? From synthetic polycationic coatings like poly-L-lysine to ECM proteins like fibronectin and vitronectin, each surface treatment offers unique benefits tailored to specific cell specific applications and experimental goals. The choice impacts more than just adhesion. It can influence cell viability, behavior, differentiation, and even affect experimental reproducibility.

In this final post of our series, we’ll summarize the five coatings available on WPI’s our FluoroDish™ glass-bottom culture dishes and help you match the right surface to your application.

When your cell culture experiments require more than just adhesion, when you need to guide cell behavior, support differentiation, or mimic in vivo tissue structure, fibronectin could be one of the suitable choices.

Fibronectin is a high-molecular-weight glycoprotein found naturally in the extracellular matrix (ECM), where it plays a vital role in cell signaling, migration, and morphogenesis. In vitro, it supports both structural attachment and biochemical communication through integrin-mediated pathways. In WPI’s 35 mm fibronectin coated FluoroDish™ with a 23 mm glass bottom provides a biologically active microenvironment, perfect for small-format, high-qualityimaging experiments where clarity and precision matter.

Culturing human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) requires more than a supportive surface, it demands consistency, control, and clinical readiness. Vitronectin is commonly  used for culturing hPSCs since vitronectin supports growth and differentiation of these stem cells.

Vitronectin is an extracellular matrix (ECM) glycoprotein that promotes cell adhesion and survival via integrin binding. It plays a critical role in xeno-free, feeder-free culture systems—especially for labs cultivating embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). WPI’s Vitronectin coated 35 mm FluoroDish™ with a 23 mm glass bottom viewing window,  offers a biologically functional, imaging-optimized environment ideal for maintaining stem cells in their most pristine state.

In most cell culture protocols, improving adhesion plays a critical role, but not every experiment necessarily requires coatings that remain stable long-term or biologically complex substrates. That’s where Poly-L-Lysine (PLL) proves to be a suitable choice

PLL is a synthetic polymer that enhances cell attachment by increasing the surface’s positive charge, helping negatively charged, anchorage-dependent cells adhere more readily to otherwise non-adhesive surfaces like glass or plastic. While it doesn’t mimic the extracellular matrix, PLL remains a trusted choice for labs needing short-term adhesion for cell culture studies of shorter duration, especially during transfection, immunostaining, or fixed-cell imaging. WPI’s 35mm FluoroDish™ with 23 mm glass-bottom culture dishes, provides a consistent, high-clarity platform perfect for observing and documenting cellular events with confidence

In the world of cell culture, the substrate matters. For many anchorage-dependent cells, simply providing a surface isn’t enough. These cells need biological cues that replicate the natural environment of the body to adhere and grow properly.  That’s why surface coating of the substrate plays a vital role in the in vitro cell culture for biomimicry in vivo conditions,

In most tissues inside the body, cells normally stay anchored to extracellular matrix (ECM), a porous network of secreted proteins and proteoglycans. The ECM provides structural support to tissues in vivo and helps in retaining secretory factors, such as growth factors which can regulate cell behavior and function through receptor mediated cell signaling. Collagen is one of the most abundant structural proteins in connective tissues and a major component of the ECM.  In vitro, it serves as a powerful coating option to promote cell adhesion, spreading, and function, particularly in sensitive or primary cell types. WPI offers...more

In any successful cell culture experiment, the story starts at the surface. Whether you're working with primary neurons, stem cells, or epithelial monolayers, anchorage-dependent cells rely on the substrate beneath them to survive, adhere, and thrive. The chemical and biological cues provided by the surface can dramatically influence cell morphology, proliferation, differentiation, and even gene expression.

That’s why surface coatings on cell culture dishes plays a critical role in mammalian cell culture-based research. From naturally derived proteins like collagen, fibronectin, and vitronectin to synthetic compounds such as poly-D-lysine (PDL) and poly-L-lysine (PLL), these treatments transform plain cultureware into biologically active environments. The right coating not only supports attachment, but it can help to maintain normal cellular morphology and guide the cell fate. Anchorage dependent cells, when unable to find appropriate surface to adhere to, can undergo programmed or unprogrammed...more

Petri cell culture dishes like WPI’s FluoroDishes™ are commonly used in laboratories, but they require precision and care to ensure the accurate results of your work. Let’s look at several common mistakes made with cell culture dishes and how you can avoid them.

Get the highest quality images and video for your research with FluoroDish Cell Culture dishes. Their optical quality glass bottom is as thin as a coverslip, which ensures the least amount of distortions and excellent heat transfer without any of the autofluoresence issues so common with plastic petri dishes.  

Choose the style that suits your application. For live cell imaging, embryo research, and life science researchers working with small sample volumes, the 35mm Fluorodish petri dish with a 10mm well (FD3510) is ideal. Researchers working with expensive chemicals or experimental drugs choose the FD3510. They are also an excellent choice for microinjection applications, because they are designed with the lowest access angle for easier insertion of a micropipette during cellular microinjection. Fluorodishes are also available in 35mm (FD35) or 50mm (FD5040) sizes for cell culturing applications. For better adhesion of neurons, try the 35mm Fluorodish that is coated with poly-D-lysine...more

In the process of ‘cell cycle’, cells grow and divide into two genetically identical daughter cells. It is regulated by a complex signaling pathway which keeps cell homeostasis by regulating cell division and DNA duplication1. On the other hand, because cancer cells grow and divide indefinitely out of cell cycle control, anti-mitotic drugs are used to suppress abnormal proliferation of cancer cells2. In particular, Nocodazole is known to be a representative anti-mitotic drug for cancer treatment, and it has the characteristics of disturbing microtubule dynamics during cytoplasmic and nuclear division3,4.

Cytotoxicity refers to the degree of damage to cells.   caused by chemical substances or physical factors. Measuring it through cytotoxicity assay is essential for drug development and biological research. Cells undergo complex signaling pathways that causes various cell death processes such as apoptosis, necrosis, and necroptosis. However, most cytotoxicity assays are measured at the endpoint that makes it difficult to study the dynamic response of cells to drugs.

In this application note, we aimed to examine the performance of a cytotoxicity assay using real-time imaging. Cells treated with various concentrations of Nocodazole, the anti-cancer drug, were stained with fluorescent dye during cell death, then monitored with Celloger® Mini Plus. It was observed through time-lapse imaging that apoptosis increased in a Nocodazole dose-dependent manner, and the degree of apoptosis was quantitatively measured and graphed using the Analysis software provided with the Celloger® Mini Plus.

As white blood cells responsible for immune function are suspension cells that travel along blood vessels, immunology studies often use various suspension cell lines originating from white blood cells. Dealing with suspension cells, unlike adherent cells, slight movement of a plate when locating it on the microscope causes the cells to float. Aside from the problems caused by temperature and CO2 instability, it is in fact not possible to use a traditional microscope to monitor cells in real time. Therefore, in order to stably monitor suspension cells, a live cell imaging device such as Celloger® Mini Plus that operates inside an incubator is essential1. In addition, with Celloger® Mini Plus, the camera inside the system moves to capture the images of cells in multiple positions to keep the cell sample in a steady state instead of having a movable stage with a plate on it. When the suspension cells were monitored both by Celloger® Mini Plus and microscope, imaging with Celloger® Mini Plus...more

Celloger® Mini Plus is an automated live cell imaging system that is equipped with an advanced fluorescence and bright field microscopy, autofocusing and real time multi-position imaging technology. It provides you all the tools you need to acquire the best quality images and accurate research results. Various cell-based research work and applications can be done with this all-around system.

Importance of Live Cell Imaging

Starting with the discoveries of microscopes in the 16th centuries, there have been endless desires to peer into objects that cannot be seen by the naked eye. With the development of technology and the introduction of live cell imaging, it has transformed the way researchers study cells, tissues, proteins and other cellular interactions. Live cell imaging (LCI) has became a basic analytical tool in the study of life science. Compared to studying captured images of fixed cells, observing live cells in real time provides more reliable and relevant insights into cellular...more

[by Alec Dickson] 

WPI's FluoroDish™ tissue culture dishes provide exceptional imaging quality for many applications requiring the use of inverted microscopes such as high-resolution image analysis, microinjection and electrophysical recording of fluorescent-tagged cells. We have a 50 mm diameter dish and two types of 35 mm diameter dishes.

 

Better Optical Properties than Polycarbonate

Each WPI dish has a flat (0.17mm±0.01mm thick), optical quality glass bottom, allowing the use of a much shorter working distance, larger numerical aperture (NA) and higher magnification (up to 100X). The larger NA and higher magnification provide superior quality imaging for both classical and fluorescence microscopy. Higher effective NA yields brighter images for fluorescence and higher resolution in image analysis.

The glass bottom does not fluoresce like plastic culture dishes. The lack of autofluorescence ensures a lower background signal in the fluorescence measurements. That means you can discern...more

Watch as Barney and Kelly Boyce set up an InVivo microscope chamber. Ideal for live cell imaging, the chambers, along with heaters, carbon dioxide and oxygen controllers and stagetop environments are sold by World Precision Instruments.

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