Laser Microdissection (LMD) is a contact- and contamination-free technique employed to selectively isolate specific microscopic areas like single cells or entire areas of tissues from a diverse range of tissue samples keeping the spatial context. Sometimes LMD and Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) are used in the same way. Our laser capture microscopes, driven by their distinctive laser design and advanced software, empower users to effortlessly extract Regions of Interest (ROI) from entire tissue regions, right down to individual cells or even subcellular structures like chromosomes. The characteristics of the original tissue, including its thickness, and texture have limited influence on the process. The collected dissectate can subsequently be utilized in various molecular biology techniques like Microarray, qPCR, real-time PCR, NGS, RNA-seq, Mass spectrometry and other analytical methods. These laser dissection microscopes for extraction of microscopic samples also allow live cell to capture for subsequent re-cultivation or cloning or downstream molecular biology analysis as described above and have found widespread utility across numerous research domains. Our LMD systems play a key role in unbiased, untargeted approaches for biomarker and drug target discovery in workflows like DVP (deep visual proteomics) being a perfect complement to multiplexing spatial imagers. Beyond conventional uses, they have also been adapted for tasks such as manipulating cell cultures and engraving coverslips. Additionally, our user-friendly LMD software has been thoughtfully designed to simplify the selection of settings, allowing you to concentrate on capturing high-quality sample regions. You can select, dissect, and visualize your samples easily.
Features
Essential features
- Our Microsystems employ precision optics to guide the laser beam along the desired cutting path on the tissue, utilizing prisms, and collect dissections via gravity, ensuring contaminate-free isolation of specific single cells during downstream analysis.
- Our LMD solutions help you achieve unmatched precision and speed as they enable real-time "Move and Cut" for immediate, contamination-free, perpendicular tissue cuts.
- These LMD systems provide fine-tuning of laser power, aperture, and speed. The LMD7 in addition allows control of laser head current, and pulse frequency settings, ensuring that laser adjustments cater to the specific requirements of your sample.
- Single-cell or tissue segmentation in combination with our LMD systems enabling systematic specimen dissection and their collection into various receptacles, including standard 96- or 384-well plates.
- Our laser microdissection microscopes offer various stage and camera configurations.
- The cameras provide exceptional color reproduction capability that allows for the capture of a wide color depth, facilitating the extraction of finer details from your samples. These cameras help capture images of a wide variety of challenging tissue samples using both color-brightfield and fluorescence microscopy.
Applications
Applications
- Our Laser capture microdissection microscopes find typical applications in various fields, including genomics (DNA), transcriptomics (mRNA, miRNA), proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics. Molecular biology analysis techniques like microarray, qPCR, next-generation sequencing (NGS) including RNA-seq and mass spectrometry serving the needs of researchers in neurosciences, cancer research, pathology research, developmental biology, epigenetics, plant analysis (e.g. for biopharma or nutrition), forensics, and more exotically climate research.
- LMD microscopes can be even used for live cell culture (LCC), facilitating tasks like cloning, re-cultivation, manipulation, and downstream analysis.
- Our LMD microscopes are suitable for standard applications involving the dissection of soft tissues like the brain, liver, or kidney, and offer enhanced laser power (Leica LMD7) and controls and are well-suited for dissecting a wide range of tissue types regardless of their size or shape.
- Our color and monochrome cameras are ideal for fast and reliable analytical tasks in life science, industrial, and clinical applications, allowing you to image a wide range of challenging samples, including fluorescently labeled tissues, and forensic evidence, using color-brightfield and fluorescence microscopy.