A user group of 11 NIH funded investigators requests $599,695.36 to purchase a Zeiss LSM 880 with Fast Mode Airyscan point-scanning confocal, which will be housed in the Department of MCB LM Imaging Facility at the University of California, Davis. This instrument solves three pressing needs of our heavily- used facility: 1) replacement of our old and outdated point-scanning confocal purchased with a 2003 NIH S10, 2) live cell imaging at temporal rates, duration and resolution (essentially super-resolution) required by many of our Major Users, and 3) an alternate and easy to use low-excitation-light confocal system to relieve the usage pressure on our spinning disk confocal system. The unique versatility of the proposed instrument offers a very sensible, cost-efficient, and high-performing solution to current needs in our facility and of the Major Users in this proposal. Central to this proposal is the Airyscan detector available on the Zeiss LSM 880. While other confocals we demonstrated performed adequately for our point-scanning confocal needs, only the Airyscan detector extends functionality to include rapid, low-excitation light, and super-resolution live cell imaging. This added capability was convincingly supported by a direct comparison of it with our existing facility instruments for live cell imaging (a 3i spinning disk confocal) and super-resolution imaging (a Nikon N- SIM). As shown here, the Airyscan produced resolution comparable to our N-SIM (full Airyscan mode) and live cell image photo-bleaching at rates 3 to 5-times better than our spinning disk confocal (fast Airyscan mode). Live cell imaging resolution was comparable to the OMX-SR we had demonstrated in November 2017 while producing ~10-fold less photo-bleaching and allowing image acquisition rates five to ten-times faster. Management of the proposed instrument will be integrated into the existing, successful MCB Light Microscopy Imaging (LM) Facility and implemented by a full time, PhD-level technical scientific director. The MCB LM Facility currently serves a large number of UC-Davis researchers and is a designated UC- Davis Campus Research Core Facility (http://research.ucdavis.edu/research/core-facilities-services/uc- davis-core-facilities/). Since July 2005, at least 452 scientists from 148 laboratories in 37 departments and nine colleges or centers have paid for more than 49,901 hours of instrument time generating more than $1,571,564 of income to help operate the Facility.
The new Zeiss 880 LSM with Fast Mode Airyscan will greatly aid the rapid growth in cell, tissue, and developmental biology at UC-Davis by allowing investigators to make higher spatial and temporal resolution structural observations than currently possible within the Department of MCB Light Microscopy Imaging Facility. Almost certainly such studies will reveal fundamental molecular mechanisms not yet understand or even imagined. Such insights are at the heart of the wide-ranging mission of UC-Davis, where fundamental discoveries in basic biology can be exploited and ultimately employed in patient care and health delivery systems to profoundly benefit the public good.
