Development of high-speed SICM for biological applications.

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Scanning ion conductance microscopy(SICM) has been pioneered in the UK to image the surface of live cells , under solution, at high resolution to visualize structures that are so small that they are only detectable using an electron microscope, when the cells are fixed. It can be used to follow changes in cell dynamics during important processes at the cell membrane such as the entry or exit of molecules or viruses and the reorganisation of the cell membrane during signalling. However the application of SICM has been limited due to the time it takes to obtain an image. If it was possible to image faster then it would be possible to follow, for the first time, some key biological processes and observe many more details of other important biological processes. To do this we aim to redesign the instrument taking advantage of improvements that have been made to atomic force microscopy to obtain high speed images and advances in high speed computer boards to control the instrument. The redsigned instrument will be optimised on test samples and then finally demonstrated on live cells.