Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

We request funding to upgrade a fluorescence microscope to a confocal microscope. The microscope is in a common microscopy facility whose last confocal stopped functioning over 10 years ago. We are unusual as a Department of Biology in not having a shared confocal microscope and consequently our students and postdocs are extremely limited in the imaging they can currently do. Confocal technology has advanced significantly over the last decade with vastly improved light path efficiency which has increased sensitivity and reduced its footprint and cost. In upgrading our current fluorescent microscope to a confocal we gain access to a state-of-the-art scan head with highly efficient light path and a platform with excellent signal to noise ratio, and we take advantage of many parts of the current system including lenses and cameras. In this upgrade we are also able to keep the same software used on other instruments in the facility, which will enhance training opportunities for diverse users. Our team includes research groups studying a wide range of organisms from fungi, plants, sponges, to fruit fly and vertebrates. Our trainees are undergraduates, graduate students (Masters and Doctoral level) as well as postdoctoral fellows who hold many scholarships and who are well-published. Many are also involved in outreach within and outside of our department. The requested instrument will be housed in a common microscopy facility where training is overseen by a technician with over 5 years of experience on several different confocal platforms.  Graduate students today seek training in advanced techniques, and with rapid advances in molecular biology leading research programs are asking precisely where genes are expressed in animal and plant tissues. But for studying model organisms, the use of confocal has gone beyond characterizing and static preparations, more-and-more to developing and using genetically encoded reporters that elevate our work into quantifying outcomes and live-tracking of events that were inaccessible only years ago. Without contemporary microscopy all those investments and training opportunities are lost, and more importantly, our students' great potential to be inventive with fluorescent reporters is also lost. Not having had access to a confocal microscope for years has been a major loss to all of our groups and we now urgently need this instrument to continue training our students and associates in high-quality microscopy research.