A Basic Understanding of Microscopy
Assignment 1
Kaplan University-Microbiology
Since microorganisms are not visible to the eye, the essential tool in microbiology is the microscope. One of the first to use a microscope to observe microorganisms was Robert Hooke, the English biologist who observed algae and fungi in the 1660s. In the 1670s, “Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch merchant, constructed a number of simple microscopes and observed details of numerous forms of protozoa, fungi, and bacteria” (Introduction to Microscopes, n.d.). During the 1700s, microscopes were used to further explore on the microbial world, and by the late 1800s, the light microscope had been developed. “The electron microscope was developed in the 1940s, thus…show more content… As you can see there are advantages to the light and an electron microscope depending on what it is that you need to study. The light microscope is good for viewing specimens that are alive under limited resolution but not powerful enough to view the inside mechanism like the electron microscope, even though the specimen is not alive under this microscope.
Stains
Apart from advances in microscopes to view what the un-aided eye cannot, there are stains that help differentiate between the type of bacteria, viruses, spores or even flagella. The most commonly used stains are the Simple stain, Differential stain which consists of Gram positive and negative and the Acid- fast stain.
The Simple stain: Technique can be performed with basic dyes such as crystal violet or methylene blue, positively charged dyes that are attracted to the negatively charged materials of the microbial cytoplasm. “An alternative is to use a dye such as nigrosin or Congo red, acidic, negatively charged dyes. They are repelled by the negatively charged cytoplasm and gather around the cells, leaving the cells clear and unstained. This technique is called the negative stain technique” (Tortora, G., Funke, B., & Case, C., 2010).
The Differential stain: Technique distinguishes two kinds of organisms. into
