NanoSIMS

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The Göttingen Campus is one of the leading centers in Europe in both imaging technology and biomedical sciences, with an emphasis on neuroscience. We are currently able to follow cells and organelles by electron microscopy, X-ray microscopy, and by the most modern light imaging techniques. These tools enable us to investigate the organization and the movement of cellular structures. However, they ignore the temporal dimension, the changes that take place during the cellular lifetime (cellular turnover). This aspect can be addressed by the incorporation of isotopically-tagged metabolites into living cells and animals, which should be imaged with high precision. We therefore apply here for an instrument capable of imaging isotopic species at high resolution: 30-50 nm in the lateral plane, and down to less than 6 nm in the axial direction. This instrument will be used in a variety of projects, mostly in the biomedical field, but also in geology, chemistry and physics. Combined with the current expertise in imaging at the Göttingen campus, this device will provide a new resource for German research: the high-resolution imaging of metabolism and turnover, in the form of a German Biomedical NanoSIMS Facility.