Berndt, F. et al. Nat. Commun. 9, 5025 (2018).

A major challenge in microscopy is orienting a sample so as to obtain optimal images. This is especially true for light sheet fluorescence microscopy of developing organisms, which may be relatively large, irregular, or opaque. Berndt et al. developed a versatile, non-contact approach for positioning samples that harnesses the power of magnets. In their approach, a magnetic bead is either embedded in an agarose sphere containing the organism of interest or directly embedded into the developing organism. The user can then control the precise position and orientation of the organism by applying magnetic fields, and thereby gain access to the desired regions for imaging. The researchers showed that the approach is applicable to a range of organisms from brine shrimp to mouse embryos and used it to image developing zebrafish embryos.