MRI: Acquisition of a Confocal Raman Microscope with Cell-Sorting Capability at Montana State University

蒙大拿州立大学(MSU)获得了具有细胞分选能力的共焦拉曼显微镜。密歇根州立大学生物膜工程中心是一个以学生为中心的卓越研究中心，最初由NSF-ERC计划资助。该中心在国内和国际上都在培训生物膜研究人员方面发挥了关键作用，并通过其强调实践研究教育的研究计划，在扩大妇女和美洲原住民对工程和科学的参与方面有着良好的记录。目前，微生物学领域最紧迫的挑战之一是确定单个微生物在复杂的自然栖息地中的作用。拉曼显微镜是研究从人类和环境健康到农业生产力和生态系统功能的复杂环境中单个微生物贡献的一种新方法。拉曼显微镜是一种振动光谱方法，它提供了样品分子组成的指纹。细胞的拉曼光谱包含有关其身份、生理状态、代谢活动和健康/疾病状态的信息。密歇根州立大学的教职员工和学生将使用拉曼显微镜来表征大量生态系统中培养的和未培养的微生物的生理、活动和生态，这些生态系统包括地热泉水、深海沉积物以及与工业和医学相关的生物膜。使用拉曼进行快速和非破坏性分析的能力将使活细胞能够被分析。这将使后续实验成为可能，例如细胞分离，然后进行分子分析。该仪器的获得使密歇根州立大学的教员能够扩展到新的研究轨迹，并帮助他们将微生物组研究领域从相关研究转变为对微生物功能的因果理解。

An award is made to Montana State University (MSU) to acquire a Confocal Raman microscope with cell-sorting ability. The Center for Biofilm Engineering at MSU, where the requested instrument will be located, is a student-focused research center of excellence that was originally funded by the NSF-ERC program. The Center serves a key role, both nationally and internationally, in training biofilm researchers and also has a strong track record of broadening the participation of women and Native Americans in engineering and science through its research programs that emphasize hands-on research education. Currently, one of the most pressing challenges in microbiology is to identify roles for individual microorganisms in complex, native habitats. Raman microscopy is a novel way to study the contribution of individual microbes in complex environments that range from human and environmental health to agricultural productivity and ecosystem functioning.Raman is a vibrational spectroscopic method that provides a fingerprint of the molecular composition of a sample. A cell's Raman spectrum contains information about its identity, physiological state, metabolic activity, and health/disease state. MSU faculty and students will use the Raman microscope to characterize the physiology, activity, and ecology of cultivated and uncultivated microbes in their native state in a large number of ecosystems, including geothermal springs, deep-sea sediment, and industrially and medically relevant biofilms. The ability to use Raman for fast and non-destructive analyses will allow living cells to be analyzed. This will enable downstream experiments such as cell separation followed by molecular analyses. The acquisition of this instrument enables the expansion of MSU faculty into novel research trajectories and help them transition the field of microbiome research from correlative studies to causal understanding of microbial function.