Cells, pigments or food: looking through the eyes of a microscope
Kèvin Knoops discovered the grand world of microscopy during his studies. After his postdoc, he joined the Microscopy CORE Lab, a research platform for light and electron microscopy within the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. Kèvin recently succeeded Carmen López-Iglesias as leader of the platform. Researchers come to them with all sorts of questions and samples: “That makes it really enjoyable for us, because you never know what you’ll have under your microscope tomorrow.”
Kèvin initially wanted to become a marine biologist, until he came into contact with microscopy during his studies. “I immediately thought: this is what I want to do. I went on to specialise in both light and electron microscopy, with a focus on cell biology. After a while, I got the opportunity to join the Microscopy CORE Lab. That sounded really interesting to me, so that’s how I ended up here.”
From materials to food
All kinds of researchers can turn to Microscopy CORE Lab for microscopy. “Everyone is welcome here: PhD candidates conducting research, postdocs with a specific research question, but also researchers who have no prior knowledge of microscopy,” says Kèvin. “We work with them to determine which techniques are suitable for their needs. The research can be very broad: researchers from MERLN who want to examine specific materials, or from M4I who work on technique development, or from Campus Venlo who are studying emulsions in food. There are also companies and other universities that use our services. That makes it really enjoyable for us, because you never know what you’ll have under your microscope tomorrow.”
Imaging
“There are hundreds of ways to image something using microscopy; it depends on the research question. Does what you want to visualise need to be alive? Then you need a light microscope; that’s not yet possible with an electron microscope. Most researchers are, understandably, not familiar with all the possible techniques. We help them decide how they want to image something and how they will analyse the data obtained. We also support them when they’re actually at the microscope and we take care of equipment maintenance. We look at what we can do ourselves with IDEE and where we need to rely on manufacturers.”
In addition, Kèvin conducts his own research, focusing on new microscopic techniques. “I also teach, for example, to biomedical students at FHML, or engineering students at FSE. Occasionally we have a psychology student and sometimes even someone from an art course outside UM, who wants to look at pigments in paintings, for instance. Microscopy is used in a very wide range of fields, so that’s an interesting aspect of my work.”
Using volume-EM, we compare patient material with healthy tissue to reveal subtle morphological differences in disease and directly assess the effects of new medicine.
Rapid cooling
An important part of microscopy is sample preparation. By fixing your sample, you halt the chemical processes within it, so that you can examine it properly under the microscope. “You can do this in various ways,” says Kèvin. “For example, chemically with formaldehyde, although the downside is that it affects your sample. You can also choose to freeze it. The only problem is that ice expands, causing the structures in your sample to break. That’s why we use cryogenic methods, like with cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). This involves cooling down a sample extremely quickly, so that ice crystals don’t have time to expand. It creates a sort of glassy state. Sample preparation is a vital part of all kinds of microscopy; I’ve had about twenty years’ experience in it. We help our researchers with this, to ensure they can optimally image their samples.”
EMPower
In March 2026, the EMPower project was launched. This project is part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and aims to establish a national infrastructure to foster new scientific breakthroughs in medicine and technology.
Kèvin works on EMPower from Maastricht. “Together with the Dutch electron microscopy community, we are acquiring two new cryo-EM instruments for our joint NeCEN facility in Leiden and Utrecht. In addition, we will introduce a new technique in Maastricht: volume electron microscopy (volume-EM). This allows you to visualise tissues and cells in 3D and thus examine their structure and shape. Researchers used this technique before to visualise a brain of a fruit fly and a cubic millimetre brain of a mouse. You can then trace every neuron and thus map the connections in the brain.”
Plastic particles
“Using volume-EM, we compare patient material with healthy tissue to reveal subtle morphological differences in disease and directly assess the effects of new medicine. Localising things like air pollution or microplastics is also easier using volume-EM. With 2D imaging, you cut a slice of material and hope to find what you’re looking for somewhere; with 3D imaging, searching is much simpler. If you combine volume-EM with light microscopy, where you can already detect those particles at lower magnification, you even know where to look with the electron microscope. That makes it much easier to demonstrate something.”
Text and photos: Joëlle van Wissen
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