The commentary of the first answerer is very pertinent: the most frequently used liposomes are too smal to ve visible under a conventional optical microscopy (a near-field microscope, which migh suit your purpose, being difficult to come by).
The best microscopic method for visualising a typical liposome preparation is cryo-electron miscroscopy, which requires no labelling but a lot of experience and care (owing to vesicles nonuniform distribution in the extremely thin water layer in a sample). Freeze fracture can be valuable (of done by an expert), but is normally less revealing than cryo EM.
When working with the vesicles that are large enough (micrometre range) to be well resolved by an optical microscope, you do not need to label them: phase contrast provides a sufficiently good contrast under most practically relevant conditions. If desired, you can use 'contrast enhancement' (normally achieved by preparing vesicles in a sugar solution and then diluting them in a sugar-free buffer). When using fluorescently labelled vesicles be mindful of 'halo effect'!
The commentary of the first answerer is very pertinent: the most frequently used liposomes are too smal to ve visible under a conventional optical microscopy (a near-field microscope, which migh suit your purpose, being difficult to come by).
The best microscopic method for visualising a typical liposome preparation is cryo-electron miscroscopy, which requires no labelling but a lot of experience and care (owing to vesicles nonuniform distribution in the extremely thin water layer in a sample). Freeze fracture can be valuable (of done by an expert), but is normally less revealing than cryo EM.
When working with the vesicles that are large enough (micrometre range) to be well resolved by an optical microscope, you do not need to label them: phase contrast provides a sufficiently good contrast under most practically relevant conditions. If desired, you can use 'contrast enhancement' (normally achieved by preparing vesicles in a sugar solution and then diluting them in a sugar-free buffer). When using fluorescently labelled vesicles be mindful of 'halo effect'!
One option not yet mentioned is to simply use a lipophilic fluorescent dye. These are cheap, readily available, and will "stain" (i.e. intercalate between) most lipids. FM 4-64 is one popular example.
https://www.lifetechnologies.com/order/catalog/product/T3166
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