Many important questions we can address have been made possible by new technologies. The laser capture microscope is a relatively new technology that allows isolation and purification of small populations of cells from much larger heterogeneous cell populations. Frozen or paraffin sections through tissues of interest are stained, immuno-labeled or taken from florescent cells specifically expressing GFP or other derivatives and the appropriately identified cells are fixed to a film from which DNA, RNA or protein can be isolated. The initial experimental uses of this instrument have been to separate tumor cells from surrounding normal cells, stromal cells and infiltrating lymphocytes. The properties of these purified tumor cells could then be studied without contaminating cell populations. Some of our proposed uses for this instrument also call for purification of tumor cells, however, we believe there are many additional uses of this instrument that could revolutionize aspects of developmental biology in mammalian and invertebrate model organisms. The combination of laser capture microscopy with other high sensitivity, high throughput technologies such as microarray and proteomic approaches will be employed. At AECOM we have extremely active and successful facilities for microarray analysis, proteomics and genomics. The addition of a laser capture microscope to this campus would benefit a large number of investigators and make possible experimental approaches that utilize microarrays, proteomics and genomics that are currently not possible.
