A group of investigators at the Albany Medical College (AMC) is requesting funds to purchase a Zeiss LSM510-NLO multiphoton laser scanning microscope (MPLSM), an instrument that is not available for their use at AMC. Dr. Rice is analyzing cutaneous innervation in normal and pathologic skin to study pain and neural dysfunction resulting from Herpes Zoster using mutiply-fluorescent-labeled thick samples of human skin. Dr. O'Donnell's work addresses the role of gap junctions in neural synchronizations by performing simultaneous dual whole-cell recordings from a cluster of neurons in the nucleus accumbens and then visualizing the lucifer yellow filled cells coupled with immunofluorescence in thick brain slices, a unique approach that combines cell visualization and electrophysiology to get a better idea of the modulation of gap junction function. Dr. Kimelberg's subcellular localization studies involve double or triple immunolabelling of recorded and dye-filled astrocytes in thick hippocampal sections using MPLSM to study mechanisms of excitatory amino-acid release in ischemia. Dr. Temple's research studies focus on understanding the generation of diverse cell types during development of the central nervous system (CNS). She will use time-lapse MPLSM imaging to follow the division of stem cells in live tissue slices of the cortical ventricular plate coupled with immunofluorescence to identify the progeny of asymetric division of these stem cells. Dr. Teitler proposes that the inverse agonist activity of antipsychotic drugs can be revealed by studying constitutively activated mutant (CAM) Human clozapine-sensitive 5-HT2A, 5-HT2d, 5-HT6, and 5-HT7 receptors. He will use CAM human 5HT receptor/GFP fusion proteins coupled with time-lapse MPLSM imaging to examine the effect antipsychotic drugs have on the trafficking of these receptors to the membrane and during receptor down-regulation. Dr. Herrick-Davis' goal is to identify molecular mechanisms that regulate 5-HT2C receptor activation to understand how 5-HT2C receptors function in normal and disease states. In particular she uses FRET in live cells to determine if mutant receptors physically associate or dimerize with native receptors, and thus form non-functional receptor complexes. Dr. Banas will use MPLSM to study the physiology that results from changes in gene expression in mature, live biofilms made by oral Steprococci. This group will fully utilize the capabilities of the Zeiss LSM510-NLO.
