Lambert Instruments

Cell biology is the discipline that studies cells to answer scientific questions. All organisms are composed of one or more cells and all vital functions of an organism occur within cells. Cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions. Cells possess DNA, the hereditary material of genes, and RNA, containing the information necessary to build various proteins such as enzymes, the cell's primary machinery. There are also other kinds of biomolecules in cells, e.g. lipids, proteins, macromolecules, etc.
Cell biology research includes learning the physiological properties such as the structure and the organelles of cells, their environment and interactions, their life cycle, division and function and eventual death. This is done both on microscopic and molecular level, and includes the research of single-celled organisms like bacteria as well as specialised cells in multicellular organisms like humans.

Biological tissues show intrinsic FLIM contrast because of the presence of autofluorescent structures like riboflavins and NADH. While autofluorescence is disadvantageous for observing tagged proteins of interest with e.g. FLIM (see here), the exploitation of differences in the autofluorescent properties of biological tissue will increase the throughput and reliability of histopathological screening.