MICROSCOPY AND CELL ANALYSIS SHARED RESOURCE PROJECT SUMMARY Decoding mechanisms in cancer biology requires a fundamental understanding of the relationship between structure and function. This is especially important for assessing tissue/tumor cell context, and at the macomolecular level, for organelle function and integrity, and chromosome structure and behavior. The Microscopy and Cell Analysis Shared Resource (MIC) provides exceptionally maintained high-end equipment for optical and electron microscopy, cytometry and cell sorting, and provides the technical expertise for their use to Mayo Clinic Cancer Center (MCCC) members conducting clinical or basic science cancer research. This shared resource is heavily used with 161 MCCC members using the facility in 2017, from each of the MCCC sites. The facility operates 10 hours/day on weekdays and 6 hours/day on weekends for assisted use, and for most areas 24/7 for unassisted use. The MIC provides access, training, and expertise for a wide array of state- of-the-art light and electron microscopy instrumentation, and for cell sorting and analysis. Our portfolio of instrumentation allows MCCC members to image single molecules, in live cells and tissues, or fixed specimens at optical or electron microscopic resolution, to analyze image data files by a wide variety of image analysis and 3D reconstruction packages, and to perform multi-color flow analysis and sorting of fixed or live cells. We support advanced optical imaging techniques such as FRET, TIRF, PALM, multi-photon, and 3D serial electron microscopy, as well as state-of-the-art flow cytometry and cell sorting instrumentation and analysis methods. The facility has aggressively pursued instrumentation funding which has allowed us to recently obtain a Zeiss Elyra super-resolution microscope, and this past year, a FEI Apreo Serial Block Face Electron Microscope. The MIC also provides cyberinfrastructure for data analysis, transfer, and storage of extremely large image data sets.
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