MRI: Acquisition of Combined Spinning Disc Confocal/Atomic Force Microscopy System

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An award is made to Colorado State University (CSU) to acquire a microscopy system that combines multiple techniques in a single platform. This instrument will be housed in a facility that enables secure 24-hour access for users and will be maintained by a staff scientist. The instrument will be included in a new module for an undergraduate lab course that serves about 100 students annually. Students in a graduate course on microscopy will also be introduced to the instrument. The instrument will be made available to a broad user base both inside and outside of CSU, by including it in a Microscopy Imaging Network (MIN). This network has a pilot grant program for new instrument users. These pilot grants support user training and preliminary data acquisition on this and other microscopy instruments at CSU. The instrument will combine scanning probe and optical techniques. The scanning probe techniques enable imaging of the topographical features and mechanical properties of samples at very high resolution. The optical techniques include spinning disc confocal microscopy, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), and photoactivation (PA). The instrument will be configured to perform imaging of wet samples including live cells. Combining these fundamentally different yet complementary techniques on a single platform enables interrogation of multiple sample properties simultaneously and in the exact same field of view. Therefore specific measurements made with one technique (e.g. mechanical properties) can be correlated with features (e.g. location of chemical functional groups or biological structures) measured by another technique. Changes in these correlations and spatial organization can be monitored over time to observe biological phenomena. The initial user group consists of 19 investigators in ten academic departments from three universities (CSU, University of Colorado at Denver, and University of Denver). These investigators will use the instrument for interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects including biochemical and biophysical studies and for the development of new materials for biomedical and tissue engineering applications.