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N S Allen

Publications and source records attributed to N S Allen.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1981

Video-enhanced contrast polarization (AVEC-POL) microscopy: a new method applied to the detection of birefringence in the motile reticulopodial network of Allogromia laticollaris.

A new method is described for recording rapid processes of cell motility in polarized light. The Allen video-enhanced contrast (AVEC-POL) method of polarization microscopy achieves significant improvements in resolution, contrast, and the visibility of fine detail by a combination of novel adjustments to a standard (unrectified) polarizing microscope and video camera. Using the full working aperture of a high-power planapochromatic objective lens and compensator setting of lambda/9-lambda/4, visible images appear lacking in contrast. However, the same images viewed with an appropriate video camera equipped with an electronic offset adjustment can be made to appear with as much contrast as desired, revealing a significantly greater amount of fine detail in the image than can be seen by high extinction visual microscopy alone. At bias retardations between one-ninth and one-quarter wave, the diffraction anomaly observed near extinction disappears. Consequently, polarizing rectifiers are not required with the AVEC-POL method, and images previously requiring photographic exposures of around 20 seconds are sufficiently bright to be registered on the video monitor in 1/60 second. Using an intensity monitor, quantitative measurements of cellular birefringence can be retrieved from live or videotaped images displaying a linear relationship between contrast and phase retardation due to birefringence. The AVEC-POL method also renders accessible to polarized light analysis a number of objects that scatter or depolarize too much light to be studied by high extinction methods. The method is demonstrated on model objects and applied to the highly motile reticulopodial network of Allogromia laticollaris. Rapid motion in close association with microtubules can now be analyzed in greater detail at a significant reduction in the cost of recording.

Animals↗
PubMed1981

Video-enhanced contrast, differential interference contrast (AVEC-DIC) microscopy: a new method capable of analyzing microtubule-related motility in the reticulopodial network of Allogromia laticollaris.

A new method called Allen Video-enhanced Contrast, Differential Interference Contrast (AVEC-DIC) microscopy is shown to be sufficiently sensitive to detect several new features of microtubule-related motility in the reticulopodial network of the foraminifer, Allogromia. The method takes advantage of the variable gain and offset features of a binary video camera to operate the DIC microscope under conditions highly favorable for video imaging, but in which the optical image is virtually invisible to the eye yet retains its full information when viewed by a suitable video camera. The improvements are made possible by setting a dé Senarmont compensator to lambda/9-lambda/4 at maximal working aperture of internally corrected planapochromatic objectives. Under these conditions, the offset feature of the video camera can reject so much stray light from the instrument and specimen that contrast compares favorably with that observed in high-extinction images, and polarizing rectifiers offer scarcely any advantage. Freed from the constraints of the light-limited conditions of DIC microscopy, video images can be recorded 60 times per second, or over 1,000 times the rate of photomicrographs at comparable magnifications under high-extinction conditions. Application of this method to the reticulopodial network of Allogromia has shown that cytoplasmic organelles are translocated only in contact with single microtubules or bundles of microtubules, and that these organelles fail to move when separated from microtubules. Microtubules themselves undergo both axial translatory ("sliding") and lateral "zipping and unzipping" movements that have been suggested to occur during mitosis and other biological processes.

Animals↗
PubMed1974

Endoplasmic filaments generate the motive force for rotational streaming in Nitella.

The streaming endoplasm of characean cells has been shown to contain previously unreported endoplasmic filaments along which bending waves are observed under the light microscope using special techniques. The bending waves are similar to those propagated along sperm tails causing propulsion of sperm. In Nitella there is reason to believe that nearly all of the filaments are anchored in the cortex and that their beating propels the endoplasm in which they are suspended. This hypothesis is supported by calculations in which typical and average wave parameters have been inserted into the classical hydrodynamic equations derived for sperm tail bending waves. These calculations come within an order of magnitude of predicting the velocity of streaming and they show that waves of the character described, propagated along an estimated 52 m of endoplasmic filaments per cell, must generate a total motive force per cell within less than an order of magnitude of the forces measured experimentally by others. If we assume that undulating filaments produce the force driving the endoplasm, then the method described for measuring the motive force could lead to a lower than actual value for the motive force, since both centrifugation and vacuolar perfusion would reverse the orientation of some filaments. Observations of the initiation of particle translation in association with the filaments suggest that particle transport and wave propagation, which occur at the same velocity, may both be dependent on the same process. The possibility that some form of contractility provides the motive force for filament flection and particle transport is discussed.

Chlorophyta↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Dyke Award. Europium-DTPA: a gadolinium analogue traceable by fluorescence microscopy.

A lanthanide series chelate, europium(Eu)-DTPA, was synthesized to serve as a histochemical analogue for the widely used MR contrast agent gadolinium(Gd)-DTPA. Eu and Gd, being neighboring elements on the periodic table, share many fundamental properties, including ionic radius, valence, and chemical reactivity. Eu-DTPA, however, possesses one important physical property not shared by Gd-DTPA: luminescence under ultraviolet light. The feasibility of detecting Eu-DTPA in animal tissues under fluorescence microscopy was systematically evaluated and documented. Distinctive orange-red luminescence of Eu-DTPA could be observed in the kidneys, livers, dura, choroid, and pituitary glands of rats after intravascular injection. No luminescence was detected in areas of brain beyond an intact blood-brain barrier. When the brain was locally injured by an experimental laceration, however, leakage of Eu-DTPA was detected. Electron probe microanalysis confirmed the parallel presence or absence of simultaneously injected Eu-DTPA and Gd-DTPA in all tissues studied. Fluorescence microscopy with Eu-DTPA has thus been validated as a method for tracing the distribution of Gd-DTPA at the microscopic level.

Animals↗