BIOLOGICAL IMAGING FACILITY

The Biological Imaging Facility houses a large range of state-of-the-art instrumentation necessary for the preparation and visualization of biological materials

LASER SCANNING CONFOCAL MICROSCOPY
A recent addition to the Biological Imaging Facility is a Leica TCS SP2 spectral photometer laser scanning confocal microscope for digital high resolution imaging of fluorescently labeled cells and tissues. This instrument is equipped with three independent laser lines (Red: HeNe 633nm/10mW; Green: HeNe 543nm/1.2mW and Blue: Ar 458-514nm/10-20mW) allowing simultaneous imaging of three diferent fluorescent dyes plus brightfield channel. The emission spectra can be rapidly customized on site due to the spectral photometer functionality. This is of particular advantage for controlling cross-talk between different dyes in multi-labeling applications and also allows rapidly establishing settings for new dyes.

The Leica TCS SP2 is equipped with a Leica DM IRB inverted microscope with fluorescence optics. Among the objectives available is a 65x water immersion objective, which is suited for deep level imaging of in vitro cultured live materials. The output from laser scanning confocal microscope is in the form of computer files, which can be written on CD using and on-site CD-burner.

For detailed information about Confocal Microscope click here

SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPY
The Electron Microscopy section of the faciltiy houses two transmission electron microscopes (Philips 201 and Philips 301) and a scanning electron microscope (Philips 505).

SPECIMENT PREPARATION
Specimens can be processed using ultramicrotomes (glass knives, diamond knives and cryosectioning) for transmission electron microscopy and bright field microscopy, and a sputter coater for scanning electron microscopy applications. Instrumentation also exists for localization techniques such as immunohistochemical labeling with gold for transmission electron microscopy.

PHOTOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT
The facility is also equipped with dark rooms and photography equipment for standard applications or enlarging electron microscopy images (Durst enlarger with supervision) and making prints.

Individuals interested in using instruments of the Biological Imaging Facility should contact either James Lee (pager: 609 0991) or Dr. Markus Friedrich (phone: 7-9612).

DNA SEQUENCING FACILITY
The DNA Sequencing Facility provides DNA sequencing to researchers at Wayne State University and Detroit area hospitals and universities. The Facility is located in Room 5177 of the Biological Sciences Building on the Wayne State University main campus.

The Facility is equipped with two Applied Biosystems 377 DNA Sequencers and one Applied Biosystems 3700 DNA Analyzer. The ABI 377 DNA Sequencers are gel based systems and can analyze 36 samples per gel. The ABI 3700 DNA Analyzer is a capillary based unit and can run 96 samples per run. This instrument has the capacity of running five 96-well plates per day. With high quality DNA samples, all three of these instruments will generate over 600 bases of sequence data with an accuracy of 98% or greater.