Collaborative Research: MRI Consortium: Development of Fiber-Coupled Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy (STED)

科罗拉多大学博尔德大学、科罗拉多大学安舒茨医学院和丹佛大学被授予开发一种独特的微型光纤耦合显微镜的奖项，该显微镜将能够以前所未有的空间分辨率进行灵活成像。这种尖端显微镜由包括工程师、物理学家和神经科学家在内的不同团队开发，不仅将在研究领域提供新的基础和实用见解，而且还将通过知识产权开发和未来的商业化和工业部署产生深远影响。研究团队将利用这一新工具来扩大正在进行的努力，以指导和激励来自科学、技术工程和数学(STEM)领域代表性不足群体的年轻学生。实时脑内成像在过去几年中取得了巨大进展，使人们能够前所未有地研究树突等动态结构如何实现学习、记忆、认知和行为等大脑功能。然而，在基于观察的对这些细胞结构的功能和反应的理解方面，未来的进展受到光的基本属性固有的模糊的限制，这种模糊模糊了这些特征。基于已建立的和诺贝尔奖获得者的受激发射耗尽(STED)显微镜原理，在这个合作项目中开发的仪器将能够将空间分辨率提高5倍。这种微型显微镜将首次能够对小结构进行成像，例如突触脊椎动态以及行为动物潜在行为和社会互动中髓鞘形成的变化。它还将使3D材料的光刻技术以前所未有的空间规模面向下一代电子设备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An award is made to the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Denver to develop a unique miniature optical fiber-coupled microscope that will enable flexible imaging at unprecedented spatial resolution. Developed with a diverse team that includes engineers, physicists, and neuroscientists, this cutting-edge microscope will not only provide new fundamental and practical insights across research areas, but will also yield far-reaching impacts through intellectual property development and future commercialization and deployment in industry. The research team will use the new instrument to expand ongoing efforts to mentor and inspire young students from groups underrepresented in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.Real-time in-brain imaging has made tremendous advances in the past few years, allowing unprecedented inquiry into how dynamic structures such as dendritic spines enable brain functions such as learning, memory, cognition, and behavior. However, future advances in observation-based understanding of the function and response of these cellular structures are limited by the blur inherent to light's fundamental properties that obscures these features. Based on the established and Nobel Prize-winning principle of Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy, the instrument developed in this collaborative project will be capable of a 5X increase in spatial resolution. This miniature microscope will enable, for the first time, imaging of small structures such as synaptic spine dynamics and changes in myelination underlying behaviors and social interactions in behaving animals. It will also enable lithography in 3D materials at unprecedented spatial scale aimed towards the next generation of electronic devices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.