Additional file 1.

Laser power measurement. (a-e) To measure the laser power, we placed the detector head of a power meter (a) in a special 'slide-shaped' device (b), as shown in (c). The special head detector-containing slide-shaped device is then placed on the confocal stage (d) to measure the laser power with a NovaII power meter (Ophir) (arrow in (e)). With this setup, the head detector is illuminated like a classic slide for UV cell destruction experiments. To determine a reproducible position for the measurement, we placed the Leica 63X HCX Plan Apo CS, NA 1.4, lambda blue objective at its upper position. Power measurements after complete recalibration of the whole system (confocal microscope, UV laser and power meter) are 186 μW at 351 nm and 168 μW at 364 nm. A more reproducible and universal measurement (objective independent, see Materials and methods) at the back aperture of the objective gives a value of 2.3 mW.

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Soustelle et al. Neural Development 2008 3:11   doi:10.1186/1749-8104-3-11