Acquisition of a Confocal Microscope

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PROJECT ABSTRACT A grant has been awarded to Dr. Howard Berg at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, to acquire a confocal microscope. An essential component of molecular biology research at the Danforth Center is to analyze the function of protein molecules within the context of the living cell. The microscope to be funded by this grant, a Zeiss LSM 510 NLO Meta, is a powerful instrument for imaging proteins and their function in living cells. The confocal microscope produces images of much higher contrast and improved resolution, critical for the analysis of cellular biology. Another indispensable feature of the confocal microscope is its ability to acquire "stacks" of optical sections through a living cell, which then can be used to reconstruct three dimensional images, allowing the study of proteins in three dimensional space of the cell. The Zeiss LSM 510 also does spectral imaging, giving the added dimension of analyzing the kind o f light emitted from molecules. This is a sophisticated tool for simultaneously tracking the behavior of many spectrally similar fluorescent proteins and dyes simultaneously, and for quantitatively measuring the interaction of proteins and also physiological processes in cells. The equipment will be housed in the Danforth Center's Integrated Microscopy Facility, a leader in applying new microscopy technology to the study of plant cells. The Danforth Center is a non-profit plant science research institute home to several hundred plant scientists and from these there will be undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and senior personnel bringing projects that will use the instrumentation. The current projects from Danforth personnel that will use this equipment include: investigation of the cell and molecular biology of plant pathogenic viruses (tobamoviruses and geminiviruses) during infection of plant cells; investigation of Rab protein-mediated membrane trafficking in plant cells; analysis of proteins involved in regulating plant development in the shoot apex; membrane biology of giant cells induced by nematodes; study of the development of soybean allergen in soybean tissue; investigation of the binding sites of plant pathogenic viruses in their aphid vectors; investigation of enzyme complexes involved in nucleic acid metabolism; and study of antigens produced by plant vaccines to investigate their targeting in mammalian tissue. Scientists from regional institutes studying plant biology, including Washington University, Missouri Botanical Gardens, and the University of Missouri-Columbia, will make use of the instrument. The Danforth Center is a leader in using modern tools of molecular science to improve agriculture and human health and nutrition. The confocal microscope funded by this grant will be critical in our goal to understand the molecular biology of plant cells.