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Immune system ready for its close-up

Deciphering the inner workings of the body's disease-fighting system receives a welcomed assist from a new generation of microscopes.

By Susan J. Landers, amednews staff. Aug. 12, 2002.

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Washington -- It may not be a Steven Spielberg production, but "The Immune System: The Movie," holds early promise for understanding how humans fend off invading microbes -- high drama indeed.

Using newly developed technologies, scientists are now able to see the immune system in action.

"We see movement. We see things in three dimensions and over time in a way you can't if you just take a thick section of tissue," said Ronald Germain, MD, PhD, deputy chief of the Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Using a confocal microscope, Dr. Germain and his fellow NIAID researchers are able to watch how the cells behave, where they go and even, up to a point, how their daughter cells behave.

Dr. Germain and colleagues published their findings earlier this summer in the June 7 Science. Their paper joined two others in reporting immune system findings detected by using sophisticated microscopes that can scan through a thick sample and limit their focus to living cells lying deep within the lymph nodes. All of the researchers used tissue from mice.

Dr. Germain says his microscope looks pretty much like most large research microscopes, but it is connected via cables to high-powered lasers that can scan an image very rapidly taking thin visual slices.

"You actually use optical tricks to figure out where you are, then the computer reconstructs the thicker object from that high resolution information at each level. So you can look at each level or you can put it together," said Dr. Germain. [...]