Guide to light-sheet microscopy for adventurous biologists

Ten years of development in light-sheet microscopy have led to spectacular demonstrations of its capabilities. The technology is ready to assist biologists in tackling scientific problems, but are biologists ready for it? Here we discuss the interdisciplinary challenges light-sheet microscopy presents for biologists and highlight available resources.

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Figure 1: Current light-sheet microscopes.
Figure 2: (a) 3D rendering of the OpenSPIM design.
Figure 3: The Big Data Challenge.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all members of the ever growing light-sheet community who push this field forward. All participants, speakers and instructors of the first EMBO practical course on light-sheet microscopy in Dresden inspired us to get this piece written. We thank J. Oegema for Figure 3b and L. Gutierrez-Heredia for Figure 2b.

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Correspondence to Pavel Tomancak.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Reynaud, E., Peychl, J., Huisken, J. et al. Guide to light-sheet microscopy for adventurous biologists. Nat Methods 12, 30–34 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3222

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