Question

1. After several weeks of staining procedures, explain how fixation and staining reveals additional information about a microscopic object.

2. You have discovered a new kind of microbe, never observed before. What kind of questions about this microbe might be answered by light microscopy? What questions would be better addressed by electron microscopy

Answer 1

1. The tissue consist of cells of different shapes, sizes and arrangements. This complexity of tissue can be easily understand in details with the help of fixation and staining. Cells with abnormal shape or abnormal arrangements are the indicator of a disease state. Simultaneously multiple stain types can be used on a particular tissue to indicate different cell types in different colors. Visualizing more than one protein at once give the researchers an advantageous approach. Another major advantage of using stain is that stain can last longer. Certain methods will allow a thin slice of tissue that has been stained by chemicals to be preserved for many years. Chemical stains can do more than visualize cells in different colors; the darkness or lightness of the color can be altered as well. This will give researchers even more information about the cells.

2. Light microscope could answer the questions regarding cells arrangement, cells shape, cells type, characteristics of cells as well as information about individual cell or a colony where as electron microscope could answer regarding the intracellular and extracellular structure as well microbe type (whether virus or bacteria), subcellular structure and counts.