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

该合同用于购买Palm显微镜，使单个细胞和组织切片能够被操纵，并从复杂的细胞和组织混合物中进行亚采样。该显微镜有两个主要特点：“激光光学镊子”允许细胞移动和彼此分离，而“显微解剖”功能允许细胞和组织被切割和分离，以供后续分析。该仪器将形成一个共享的跨学科设施的核心，为加州大学欧文分校(UCI)和南加州的其他研究人员提供服务。除了作为研究中心的重要作用外，该设施还将用于培训研究生和本科生，并将支持来自科学界代表性不足群体的当地学龄儿童的科学推广。掌上显微镜将对海洋和其他环境研究、培训和教学产生强大的积极影响。显微镜将提供一个核心设施，研究人员可以在其中进行合作，教师可以让学生亲身接触到尖端仪器，为研究生和本科生提供真实的研究体验。加州大学圣迭戈分校每年有超过一半的本科生是他们家庭中第一个上大学的人，而且大多数人来自代表人数较少的少数群体；因此，加强海洋和环境研究和教学支持了南加州多样化的学习者社区。具体的更广泛的影响计划包括：(1)直接培训学生研究人员，以支持UCI进行进步的跨学科研究的承诺；(2)通过将显微镜纳入UCI的“水上田野方法”课程，激发学生对实地研究的热情，并为UCI本科生提供真实的研究体验；以及(3)通过UCI实验室实验和物理科学活动(LEAPS)计划，激发当地社区学校的年轻学习者的好奇心和热情，LEAPS计划为来自不同文化背景的圣安娜学区的中学生组织访问和动手活动。LEAPS教育计划将包括核心海洋学课程、以研究为导向的专题迷你讲座、演示和实验室之旅。学生将使用真实数据练习作图技术，并将通过完成一个混合媒体艺术项目来探索显微镜照片的美，该项目的灵感来自于他们使用PALM查看的样本。掌上显微镜将使细胞和组织切片的精细操作、显微解剖和采样成为可能，使研究人员能够在单细胞水平上应用最新的分子和微生物学技术。该仪器将支持的研究分为两大类：(1)使用光学激光镊子对具有相似特征的单个细胞或细胞组进行分类和分离，然后通过显微切割进行收集的研究；(2)通过激光显微切割寻求切除组织或生物膜切片的研究。例如，从环境样本的混合细胞组合中对表达特定酶的单个浮游植物细胞进行分类，以及从完整样本中切除具有特定特征的真菌组织切片。Palm工厂将支持的所有项目的共同主题是，显微镜非常精细的规模分辨率和分类能力将允许通过对感兴趣的细胞或组织切片进行研磨来回答更详细和更机械的问题。这将使研究人员能够将尖端分子技术应用于具有已知表型/生理特征的非常精确的样本，这一能力迄今不适用于这些类型的复杂、混合环境样本，这些样本对于细胞分选器来说太大，对于传统的解剖显微镜来说太小。

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.