This group proposal requests funds to aid in purchasing a Nipkow disk assembly and ancillary equipment that will establish a multiuser confocal light microscope facility at the University of Memphis. The ancillary equipment will aid in image acquisition and analysis, and provide hard copies of images for publication. The primary users of the equipment will be undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students, and faculty in the Biology Department. The requested equipment will be an addition to a digital research light microscope facility already established in the department with funds from the University, a private foundation and industry. Projects encompass a diverse group of subjects, using confocal image analysis to investigate cell wall development in actinomyetes, actin-mediated saliva secretion in tick salivary glands, and cytoskeleton function in frog oocytes. Other projects will use confocal microscopy to investigate symbioses between dinoflagellates and sea anenomes, and between plants and nitrogen- fixing bacteria. In all of these studies two major limitations are loss of contrast by out of focus light (background haze) and lack of the ability to assemble a three dimensional image of the object of study. The requested instrumentation will virtually eliminate these problems, and allow increased resolution that results from confocal imaging, making it possible to progress rapidly in these projects.
