Question: What in your opinion is the best microscope for looking at micro organisms in mammals?

Daniel Smith answered on 23 Jun 2017:

So that depends on how in depth you want to look at the organisms. If you want to see the bacteria, viruses and the general shape of cells you can use a light microscope. This keeps the cells and organisms alive so you can see how the move and/or react to things you put with them.

However if you want to see more detail, for example you want to see their organelles (the really small things in the bacteria cells that they use to live, such as the nucleus, the mitochondria, the cell membrane things like that), you will have to use an electron microscope. This gives much better zoom and detail, but will kill the cells and organisms.

We are trying to get better zoom that doesn’t kill them though because we like to see how their cells work in detail without damaging them 🙂