MRI: Acquisition of a Zeiss PALM Microscope for Molecular and Microbiological Research

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1725252
	MRI: Acquisition of a Zeiss PALM Microscope for Molecular and Microbiological Research
	Katherine Mackey
主持机构	University of California-Irvine
项目开始年	2017
	2017-09-15
项目结束日期	2020-08-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Standard Grant
项目经费	365812(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	This award funds the acquisition of a PALM microscope that enables individual cells and tissue sections to be manipulated and sub-sampled from complex mixtures of cells and tissues. The microscope has two main features: the "laser optical tweezers" allow cells to be moved and separated from one another, and the "microdissection" feature allows cells and tissues to be cut out and isolated for downstream analyses. The instrument will form the core of a shared, interdisciplinary facility that serves researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and others in southern California. In addition to its vital role as a research hub, the facility will be used to train graduate and undergraduate students, and will support science outreach for local school-aged students from underrepresented groups in the sciences. The PALM microscope will have a strong positive impact on marine and other environmental research, training, and teaching. The microscope will provide a core facility in which researchers can collaborate, and where instructors can offer students hands-on access to a cutting edge instrument to provide authentic research experiences to graduate students and undergraduates. Over half of the incoming undergraduates at UCI each year are the first in their families to attend college, and the majority are from underrepresented minority groups; hence, strengthening marine and environmental research and teaching supports a diverse community of learners in southern California. The specific broader impacts plan includes (1) direct training of student researchers to support UCI's commitment to conducting progressive interdisciplinary research, (2) generating passion for field research and providing authentic research experiences for UCI undergraduates through the microscope's incorporation into an "Aquatic Field Methods" course at UCI, and (3) inspiring curiosity and enthusiasm in young learners in local community schools via the UCI Laboratory Experiments and Activities in the Physical Sciences (LEAPS) Program, which organizes visits and hands-on-activities for middle school students from the culturally diverse Santa Ana school district. The LEAPS educational program will include core oceanography curriculum, feature research-oriented mini-lectures, demonstrations, and a laboratory tour. Students will work with real data to practice graphing techniques and will explore the beauty of microscopy photographs by completing a mixed media art project inspired by specimens they view using the PALM. The PALM microscope will enable fine scale manipulation, microdissection, and sampling of cells and tissue sections, enabling researchers to apply the newest molecular and microbiological techniques at the single-cell level. Research that will be supported by the instrument fall into two broad categories: (1) research that sorts and separates single cells or groups of cells with similar characteristics using optical laser tweezers followed by collection via microdissection, and (2) research that seeks to excise tissue or biofilm sections via laser microdissection. Examples include sorting individual phytoplankton cells that express a particular enzyme from mixed assemblages of cells in environmental samples, to excising fungal tissue sections with specific traits from intact specimen. The common theme of all the projects the PALM facility will support is that the very fine scale resolution and sorting capabilities of the microscope will allow more detailed and mechanistic questions to be answered by honing in on cells or tissue sections of interest. This will enable researchers to apply cutting edge molecular techniques on very precise samples with known phenotypic/physiological characteristics, an ability heretofore unavailable for these types of complex, mixed environmental samples that are too large for cell sorters and too small for traditional dissecting microscopes.
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/72000
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Katherine Mackey.MRI: Acquisition of a Zeiss PALM Microscope for Molecular and Microbiological Research.2017.