2: How We See the Invisible World
When we look at a rainbow, its colors span the full spectrum of light that the human eye can detect and differentiate. Each hue represents a different frequency of visible light, processed by our eyes and brains and rendered as red, orange, yellow, green, or one of the many other familiar colors that have always been a part of the human experience. But only recently have humans developed an understanding of the properties of light that allow us to see images in color.
Over the past several centuries, we have learned to manipulate light to peer into previously invisible worlds—those too small or too far away to be seen by the naked eye. Through a microscope, we can examine microbial cells and colonies, using various techniques to manipulate color, size, and contrast in ways that help us identify species and diagnose disease.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) illustrates how we can apply the properties of light to visualize and magnify images; but these stunning micrographs are just two examples of the numerous types of images we are now able to produce with different microscopic technologies. This chapter explores how various types of microscopes manipulate light in order to provide a window into the world of microorganisms. By understanding how various kinds of microscopes work, we can produce highly detailed images of microbes that can be useful for both research and clinical applications.
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- 2.1: The Properties of Light
- Visible light consists of electromagnetic waves that behave like other waves. Hence, many of the properties of light that are relevant to microscopy can be understood in terms of light’s behavior as a wave. An important property of light waves is the wavelength, or the distance between one peak of a wave and the next peak. The height of each peak (or depth of each trough) is called the amplitude.
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- 2.2: Peering into the Invisible World
- Italian scholar Girolamo Fracastoro is regarded as the first person to formally postulate that disease was spread by tiny invisible seminaria. He proposed that these seeds could attach themselves to certain objects that supported their transfer from person to person. However, since the technology for seeing such tiny objects did not yet exist, the existence of the seminaria remained hypothetical for a little over a century—an invisible world waiting to be revealed.
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- 2.3: Instruments of Microscopy
- The 20th century saw the development of microscopes that leveraged nonvisible light, such as fluorescence microscopy, which uses an ultraviolet light source, and electron microscopy, which uses short-wavelength electron beams. These advances led to major improvements in magnification, resolution, and contrast. In this section, we will survey the broad range of modern microscopic technology and common applications for each type of microscope.
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- 2.4: Staining Microscopic Specimens
- In their natural state, most of the cells and microorganisms that we observe under the microscope lack color and contrast. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to detect important cellular structures and their distinguishing characteristics without artificially treating specimens. Here, we will focus on the most clinically relevant techniques developed to identify specific microbes, cellular structures, DNA sequences, or indicators of infection in tissue samples, under the microscope.
Thumbnail: A compound microscope in a Biology lab. (CC -BY-SA 4.0; Acagastya ).