You Want to Examine the Structure of the Protein Coat

question 42

Multiple Choice

You want to examine the structure of the protein coat of a virus by microscopy. Which microscope is your best choice, and why?

• A) The scanning electron microscope-it has excellent resolution and magnification (much higher than a light microscope), and can clearly visualize viruses.
• B) An atomic force microscope-this has the highest resolution and magnification of the microscopes we discussed and we want to visualize a subcomponent of the virus particles.
• C) A fluorescent microscope-this will let us tag the virus protein coat with colored dyes in order to visualize it using this light microscope at 1000x.
• D) A bright-field light microscope-of course, we'll need to stain the viruses before we can visualize them against the bright white background at 1000x total magnification.
• E) The phase-contrast microscope-it has excellent contrast and magnification, and can be used to visualize viruses very clearly.