Acquisition of Transmission Electron Microscope for Biological Sciences

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This proposal requests funds to provide a modern transmission electron microscope facility for the Biological Sciences Department of Ohio University. This facility also serves as the Transmission Electron Microscopy Resource for the University. The requested microscope will supplement the current 1 6-year-old, student-grade electron microscope currently being used for both teaching and research in this department of 65 faculty and 80 graduate students. The upgraded facility will continue to provide training for graduate students and undergraduates with special aptitude for biology and research. It will also be used for ultrastructural research. All of these activities have been carried out for the past 25 years; they have been supported by two transmission electron microscopes in the past, but the older one was decommissioned last year, and the remaining microscope is old and was never meant for analytical research use. Research that will be done with this facility include several studies on muscle, such as _ examining the changes in the nucleocytoplasmic relationship of skeletal muscle with aging or ' with changes in activity, detecting how skeletal muscle damage occurs in the muscle fiber, or exploring the effects of dietary trace elements on cardiac ultrastructure. Besides these muscle studies, neurobiological research will include structural and computational studies of mechanoreceptors in the inner ear, and the structural mechanisms underlying the vestibular control of head movements. Another project will use a combination of time lapse and electron microscopy to study how the retina trophically affects development of the optic tectum of the brain. The mechanism by which mosquitoes become infected and transmit arboviruses will also be investigated. Ultrastructural studies will also be done on morphological adaptations evolved in Antarctic fishes to reduce their buoyant density, and how feeding upon toxic microorganisms has affected the digestive s tructure and function of marine copepods. Most of the projects listed above are currently supported by NSF funding and use a combination of methods; all of them include electron microscopy. The presence of a modern transmission electron microscope is vital to these projects. Acquisition of a new electron microscope will further enhance research in the department because of the opportunity to attract more graduate students and technicians to learn electron microscopy. It will also allow graduate students to use a greater diversity of research tools. The general effect of having a modern electron microscope will be to enhance the training capabilities, the research productivity and the level of grant support to this department.