Hello all, can someone recommend me a decent microscope capable of viewing bacteria? I am not to sure what kinds would be capable and trying to get an idea. I am more a mechanical engineer than a biologists but want to dig deeper as to what many of these bottled bacteria's contain and how aggressive they can be. Thanks.
Need a recommendation on a decent (affordable) microscope
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The_Paradox
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Those photos are off that microscope to give you an idea.
You can make out bacteria with this scope and if they are alive. If you want to actually analyze their structure you’re gonna need quite a bit higher end.
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So, I'm not an expert on this, but I've been doing quite a bit of research on this topic myself recently. Basically, if you just want to see the bacteria at the most basic level, you can pick up an optical microscope with 1000x magnification* and good resolution (like the one The_Paradox linked above) and see the bacteria. These standard optical microscopes are called brightfield microscopes.
If you want to make out the details of the bacteria/ID them, you would need either a good darkfield (optical) microscope, or a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). SEM's are insanely expensive, so my recommendation would be to either look around at the cheaper darkfield scopes to see if you can find one that's good at a reasonable price; or to get a good, cheap, brightfield microscope and swap out the microscope's condenser with a quality darkfield condenser (this way would likely be at least $50-100 cheaper than just buying a decent darkfield scope).
Sometimes the brightfield condensers have a filter holder/the ability to have inserts put in them, and a filter can be used in these to basically imitate a cheap, relatively-low quality darkfield condenser, but I wouldn't recommend this method if you're trying to ID bacteria with the scope.
*From what I've read, anything above 1000x magnification is considered false/wasted magnification with optical microscopes, as the resolution of the image shown by the scope isn't high enough to maintain the details of the specimen(s) being examined at higher magnifications (in other words, you can zoom in more than 1000x, but the more you zoom in beyond 1000x, the blurrier the image gets).
The_Paradox
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To add to the above, you can usually stick to a bright field if you just use malachite green. You’re probably going to need to stain anyways so….
You actually don't need to for the darkfield microscopes.
The_Paradox
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That’s incorrect. You don’t “have to” but contrast is greatly enhanced if you do.
"Dark field (DF) microscopy is an interesting, easy, and inexpensive alternative visualization technique to image unstained specimens. This technique has been successfully used to image bacteria [7] and protozoa [8]. "
Dark Field Microscopy-Based Biosensors for the Detection of E. coli in Environmental Water Samples - PMC
Development of sensitive methods for the determination of E. coli bacteria contamination in water distribution systems is of paramount importance to ensure the microbial safety of drinking water. This work presents a new sensing platform enabling ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The_Paradox
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That’s analytical counting, not examination. Not gonna argue though. Staining has no effect on contrast of bacteria under darkfield confocal microscope according to you."Dark field (DF) microscopy is an interesting, easy, and inexpensive alternative visualization technique to image unstained specimens. This technique has been successfully used to image bacteria [7] and protozoa [8]. "
Dark Field Microscopy-Based Biosensors for the Detection of E. coli in Environmental Water Samples - PMC
Development of sensitive methods for the determination of E. coli bacteria contamination in water distribution systems is of paramount importance to ensure the microbial safety of drinking water. This work presents a new sensing platform enabling ...
Logical fallacies and personal attacks are not appreciated. I believe that it makes a difference, I was merely pointing out that it's not always needed (and it's not always easy to do well). For an identification example rather than a counting one:
