Liverpool 3View: a national hub for 3D-EM bioscience research

需要新的3View设备来对细胞和组织内部的精细细节进行3D成像。在我们所有的项目中，我们都使用多学科方法来解决我们的问题，但是它们都是由高分辨率成像的需求联合起来的。这样做的挑战在于，你看得越近，就越难看到周围的环境。解决方案是通过样品拍摄许多连续部分的图像，然后将其数字化重建为可以从任何角度观看的3D体。这有助于理解组织内细胞之间、亚细胞区室之间的空间关系，并有助于观察罕见事件。3View系统使这种分析成为常规，允许快速处理样品。我们的项目涵盖了广泛的主题，从基本的细胞生物学和生理学，如细胞如何组织他们的通信系统，当他们移动时，细胞的循环机制是如何工作的，在衰老过程中细胞和组织的变化和健康组织的生物发生和结构组织。我们的工作还延伸到转化项目，例如工程干细胞与宿主组织之间的相互作用，用于治疗与年龄相关的眼部疾病的新型细胞支架的开发，肠道寄生虫或细菌的感染途径以及用于向细胞输送货物的新型纳米颗粒工具的开发。该设备将被安置在英国领先的电子显微镜部门，并可供来自英国和欧洲的外部科学家使用。3View是一项新技术，在英国刚刚开始建立。作为使利物浦成为这项技术的全国中心和帮助推动创新应用的一部分，我们将建立一个研讨会计划，作为经验丰富的用户的论坛，并使新用户能够了解样品处理，成像和分析。

New 3View equipment is required for imaging the fine details of the insides of cells and tissues in 3D. In all of our projects we are using multidisciplinary approaches to address our questions however they are all united by the need for imaging at high resolution. The challenge with this is that the closer you look the harder it is to see the surrounding context. The solution is to take images of many serial sections through the sample and then digitally reconstruct them into a 3D volume that can be viewed from any angle. This helps with understanding the spatial relationships between cells within tissues, between subcellular compartments and for observing rare events. The 3View system makes this type of analysis routine, allowing rapid processing of samples. Our projects span a broad range of subjects from basic cell biology and physiology such how cells organise their communication systems when they are moving, how the recycling machinery of the cell works, changes to cells and tissues during ageing and the biogenesis and structural organisation of healthy tissues. Our work also extend through to translational projects, for example interactions between engineered stem cells and host tissue, development of novel cell scaffolds for treating age-related eye disorders, infection routes taken by parasites or bacteria in the gut and the development of novel nanoparticle tools for delivering cargoes to cells. The equipment will be housed in a leading UK electron microscopy unit and available to external scientists from the UK and Europe. 3View is a new technology that is only beginning to become established within the UK. As part of making Liverpool a national hub for this technology and to help drive innovative applications, we will set up a workshop programme that will act as a forum for experienced users and will enable new users to learn about sample processing, imaging and analysis.