Researchers from 13 Sections, Laboratories, or Branches have used the Facility during the past year and 25 researchers have been newly trained to use one or more of the instruments. As every year, LIS staff have assisted Facility users to apply advanced microscopy techniques, to improve the quality of their images, to quantitate the images, and to prepare these images for publication. NIAMS publications which have benefited from such help and/or show images collected on our instruments are listed in the bibliography. LIS staff have also helped with evaluation of new instruments that Facility users are interested in. LIS Staff has developed new assays and software to evaluate and quantitate nuclear translocation, and to evaluate and quantitate chemotaxis. These projects were carried out in response to demand by users from several Branches or Laboratories. Among NIAMS investigators' publications which could not have been completed without microscopy work carried out in the Light Imaging Section, were publications expanding our knowledge of several NIAMS research target areas such as arthritis (PaiK et al. In Press); skin and tooth development and diseases (Lessard et al; Kim et al.); and muscle development (Ryall et al. 2015). Each instrument of the Facility has been put to good use. The Leica Slidescanner 400SCN that collects scans of whole slides with histology samples or fluorescently labeled tissue slices has been used steadily. Storage memory has been increased to address the needs created by a fast growth in scan numbers. For histology samples the Slidescanner works in automated mode. It produces high quality images that can be visualized online through a large range of magnifications, a la Google map. The instrument is handled by LIS staff exclusively. More than 2,000 slides have been scanned for users in 9 Laboratories/Branches outside of the Light Imaging Section. Occasionally we have helped colleagues in other IRPs by scanning their slides.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 81 publications
