Life Sciences Commons^™

Long-Term Quantitative Microscopy: From Microbial Population Dynamics To Growth Of Plant Roots, Zak Frentz

Student Theses and Dissertations

Quantitative optical measurements at the micron scale have been crucial to the study of multiple biological processes, including bacterial chemotaxis, eukaryotic gene expression and y development. Extending measurements to long time scales allows complete observation of processes that are otherwise studied piecemeal, such as development and evolution. This thesis describes the development of two types of microscope for making long term, quantitative measurements, and the tools for image analysis. The rst device is a digital holographic microscope for measuring microbial population dynamics. It allows three dimensional localization of hundreds of cells within a mm3 sized volume, at micron resolution and …