RIMI: Confocal Microscopy Facility

新墨西哥大学招收的少数族裔学生比例极高。这些学生中的许多人主修科学，并试图获得研究经验，但由于校园内缺乏通用的资源设施，他们发现很难做到这一点。该提案要求提供资金，以建立激光扫描共聚焦显微镜设施。共焦显微镜显着地减少了散焦的雾霾，这往往使许多使用传统荧光显微镜的研究无法进行。此外，共焦显微镜产生的薄光学切片可以与计算机重建结合使用，以产生信息量很大的3-D图像。这些特点使共焦显微镜成为一种非常强大的研究工具，非常适合从进化/生态研究到细胞/分子研究的广泛领域，在许多情况下，提供了初步数据来证明这些共焦分析的可行性。为这项提议做出贡献的教职员工有许多涉及少数族裔本科生和研究生的积极研究项目。这些学生和其他在新墨西哥大学注册的少数族裔学生将极大地受益于获得共焦显微镜。因此，这项建议中要求的共焦显微镜系统的购置将大大加强我们机构对少数族裔学生的培训。

The University of New Mexico has an extremely high enrollment of underrepresented minorities. Many of these students are majoring in the sciences and are attempting to gain research experience but are finding it difficult because of the lack of common-use resource facilities on campus. This proposal requests funding to establish a laser scanning confocal microscopy facility. Confocal microscopes provide a marked reduction in the out-of-focus haze that tends to make many studies employing conventional flourescence microscopy impossible to carry out. In addition, the thin optical sections produced by confocal microscopy can be used in conjunction with computer reconstructions to produce highly informative 3-D images. Such features make the confocal microscope an extremely powerful research tool that is ideally suited for the wide range from evolutionary/ecological studies to cellular/molecular investigations, an in many cases, preliminary data are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of these confocal analyses. The faculty members contributing to this proposal have active research programs that involve numerous minority undergraduate and graduate students. These students and other minority students enrolled at the University of New Mexico would greatly benefit from having access to a confocal microscope. Thus, the acquisition of the confocal microscopy system requested in this proposal should significantly enhance the training of minority students at out institution.