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Our Mission

Our goal is to enable biological discovery through bidirectional microscopy.

Bidirectional microscopy

The Luminos platform integrates patterned optical stimulation and real-time fluorescence imaging, enabling a two-way conversation between the researcher and the sample.  The Luminos technology is optimized for all-optical electrophysiology and other technically demanding bidirectional microscopy applications. 

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Luminos microscopes project arbitrary user-specified patterns of light onto the sample. The digitial micromirror device (DMD) at the core of the system has > 4M independently addressable pixels, each updated at > 10 kHz.  By modulating the DMD pattern and the LED drive current in synchrony with the camera exposures, patterns in two or more wavelengths can be simultaneously projected onto the sample.  The patterned illumination enables:

  • Targeted optogenetic stimulation;

  • Patterned photochemistry;

  • Structured illumination microscopy, including Hadamard microscopy.

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The Luminos microscopes are also customized for high-speed, high-sensitivity, and wide-area imaging.  Specially engineered light sources and cooling systems achieve illumination intensities at the sample > 3 W/cm^2.  Using custom large-format lenses and filters, the system collects approximately 50-fold more light than a conventional microscope.  Specialized camera firmware and computers can acquire data at 3.8 GB/s.​​

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In the standard configuration, the Luminos microscope can image a 6 mm field of view with 3 micron spatial resolution at an 660 Hz frame-rate.  Other objective lenses can be used to achieve larger or smaller field of view.

Optogenetic reagents

The Luminos instruments are optimized to perform all-optical electrophysiology: simultaneous optogenetic stimulation and voltage imaging.  The optogenetic actuator is the blue light-activated channelrhodopsin CheRiff.  The voltage indicator is Voltron2, loaded with the red-fluorescent HaloTag ligand dye, JF608-HTL.

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The genes for these reagents are available as:

  • Plasmids

  • Adeno-associated viruses

  • Excitable spiking HEK cell lines for ion channel screening

  • Stably expressing human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines

  • Transgenic mice 

For each of these modalities, Luminos offers diverse conditional expression vectors, promoters, and sub-cellular trafficking motifs.

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