The investigators participating in this Shared Instrumentation Grant application belong to the fields of developmental biology, microbial pathogenesis, immunology and neurobiology. They use a variety of biochemical and molecular approaches to answer questions about their particular biological systems and many of them have also used fixed cell laser scanning confocal microscopy. They now share a common need for a microscopy system that would provide higher resolution, 3- dimensional imaging of live cells to complement their approaches. Studies using such a system will open up new avenues of experimentation for these investigators and allow them to enhance and expand their NIH funded research projects. It is estimated that such a system will be used at least 35 hours per week. In the last year, we have carefully considered a variety of microscopy systems and software for optical data analysis. We believe the best choice for our purposes is the fully-integrated, networked and turnkey Applied Precision, Inc., (API) deconvolution microscopy system for data gathering and analysis. This will be coupled to our Bioptechs micro- observation chambers to enable live cell work. The API deconvolution system will be 33% cost shared. It will be housed in the Microscopy subcore of the OHSU Molecular Biology Core Facility. Its day to day operations will be managed by a trained microscopist and its long term management will be overseen by an institutional committee consisting of the director of the Molecular Biology Core Facility, the PI of this proposal as well as two other OHSU faculty who have experience with this microscopy system.
