What is a tissue culture microscope?
The tissue culture microscope is basically a type of inverted microscope. With a regular microscope, the light source is situated underneath the specimen, and the objective lens is above it. But with a tissue culture microscope, it’s the other way around. You still look down through the eyepieces, but the objective lens is located below the sample, and is illuminated from above. This setup allows you to observe the sample from underneath. As cultures tend to flourish or settle at the bottom of containers, like petri dishes, flasks and multi-well plates, this setup is ideal.