Bioscope II - AFM system for Nanoimaging Core Facility

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) is requesting an integrated system consisting of the Bioscope II Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and an inverted Olympus IX71 optical microscope for its Nanoimaging Core Facility. The requested instrument will be comprised of the state of the art AFM microscope capable imaging and probing the samples with a broad range of sizes spanning from single molecules to live cells. The Bioscope II supports all AFM capabilities including imaging in air and aqueous solutions and equipped with the module allowing analysis of live cells. The Bioscope II is designed for the integration into an inverted microscope allowing the high resolution bright field and fluorescence imaging capabilities of the inverted microscope. The proposed design is capable of the parallel and simultaneous analysis of the same sample with both imaging modules of the integrated system. The selected Olympus IX71 inverted microscope will be equipped with the module for the objective-through total internal reflection fluorescence analysis. The requested high speed and high resolution C9100-12 EM CCD camera allows the single molecule fluorescence detection with the millisecond temporal resolution. The off-line data analysis workstation will be loaded with the software requited for analysis of the AFM and optical microscopy data. The requested instrumentation will be installed in the multi-user Nanoimaging Core Facility and will be carefully overseen by the trained personnel. This instrument will be available to the pool of 10 NIH funded investigators from the UNMC. The projects include studies of molecular mechanisms of processes responsible for the integrity of the genome and related to the cancer development (the Eppley Cancer Center), development of novel approaches for the drug design and delivery (College of Pharmacy and the Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine) and understanding the mechanisms of development of neurodegenerative diseases (the Center for Neurobiology and Neurodegenerative Disorders). In fact, the pool of potential users of the instrumentation is considerably larger, so far more than 30 investigators were expressed their strong interest in the requested integrated AFM/optical microscope system. The researchers from local community are very interested in the use of the novel AFM/IX71 instrumentation, and the NIH funded investigator from the Creighton University Medical Center is one of the current instrument major users. There are two NIH funded investigators outside the campus who also want to use the unique features of the integrated Bioscope/IX71 system.