A teflon culture dish for high-magnification microscopy and measurements in single cells

A simple tissue culture dish is described which permits the use of oil immersion optics (X 100) while maintaining access to cells in culture. In combination with a micro-CO2-incubator (Ince et al. 1983) long-term as well as short-term experiments can be performed under microscopical control. The teflon dish is re-usable, resistant to sterilization procedures, and easy to assemble. Standard glass coverslips with adherent cells are secured to the dish by an aluminium ring with a bayonet fitting. Both phase-contrast and interference-contrast microscopy with high magnification can be used. The dish is of particular use in electrophysiological investigations where the patch-clamp technique is used and frequent exchange of cultures is required. With this unit, single ion channel activity in cultured human monocytes was measured. The dish has also been used in studies in which membrane potential measurements were performed with glass microelectrodes in small cells under culture conditions. The applications described include video time-lapse sequences of phagocytosis with micro-organisms presented to mouse peritoneal macrophages with broken-tipped pipettes. This easy to use, multi-purpose dish offers the cell physiologist a valuable aid for the manipulation and observation of single cells in culture.