I have developed an AFM, and I want to capture an impressive image with it. So far, I have only scanned calibration samples. The resolution power and sharpness of the images are quite good. I thought I could image a virus with the AFM. However, I am a physicist. Where can I obtain a non-hazardous virus sample that I can find locally and prepare with my limited knowledge? How can I prepare it?
Best of luck!
Thank you Roy Cohen. Initially, I considered imaging DNA. Extracting strawberry DNA seems relatively easy. Even human DNA can be extracted at home without requiring special equipment. I thought I might find a similar virus naturally present in the environment. From what you said, it seems that viruses would be a more problematic choice compared to DNA. Still, I’d like to ask: isn’t it possible to find viruses naturally in our surroundings?
Any good microbiology research lab would probably be able to generate a stock of a bacteriophage that you could image. You can also purchase stocks of many bacteriophages commercially and just have it sent to you.
Thank you, Michael J. Benedik. I want to capture an image of a virus to demonstrate the high-resolution power of the atomic force microscope I have developed. It has sub-nanometer resolution. I hope to see the surface details of the virus. Bacteria are too large for this purpose, as their sizes are in the micrometer range.
Yes I know that. Bacteriophage is the term for a virus that infects bacteria. They are normal viruses but are entirely safe to work with and easy to propagate. You can buy stocks of them from many vendors of biological reagents.
Michael J. Benedik, Thank you again. The information you provided is very valuable to me. I am grateful. Unfortunately, it takes weeks for such an order to reach my location. Therefore, I was wondering if I could obtain a virus using local methods, such as simple techniques like extracting strawberry DNA. I will research bacteriophages.
Isolating DNA is pretty simple but I'm not sure it will be sufficiently interesting for you. It certainly is small but is only going to look like a piece of string.
You can find viruses out in nature nearly everywhere. The density of viruses in seawater for example (or lake water) is about 10e6 / ml. however there is so much other crud that it may be hard to figure out what you are looking at. Possibly if you were to filter sea water through a small pore filter (such as 0.22micron filter) then you might have water highly enriched for virus particles. But you won't really know what you are looking at unless you are lucky enough to see something that looks like a typical tailed virus.
- Badges
- Science topic