UPDATED:
21 May 2012
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The facilities are a collection of state of the art imaging facilities in the College of Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology. The facilities were original established in 2001 in the department of Biochemistry. In 2007 the facilities were extended and became the Advanced Microscope Facilities in the School of Biological Sciences, with a Senior Experimental Officer allocated to run the facilities. With the change to a College structure in 2009 and a further extension of the facilities, including imaging equipment other than microscopes, the name of the facilities was changed to 'Advanced Imaging Facilities'. The purpose of the facilities is to provide to researchers and students state of the art imaging equipment and image analysis software for their research. A modest fee is charged for use of the facilities to cover maintenance contracts and consumables. The facilities are spread over several buildings within the college. All users will receive basic training on the systems and troubleshooting, advice for experimental designs and advice for grant applications. The facility staff can assist you with your research but often we train users to operate the equipment themselves. Research collaborations are possible. Contact Dr. Kees Straatman, facility manager.
Light microscopy is in high demand and new systems and techniques are developed continuously to meet increasing scientific needs. We try to expand the facilities to keep accessibility problems low and to introduce new techniques. Please send your comments to improve the facilities or suggest additional techniques.
If you publish results obtained using the light microscope facilities please mention this in your acknowledgements and send a reference to us. This will make securing of future funding for the facility easier. A list of publications can be found here.
Microscopes
The Henry Wellcome Building (HWB) has a light microscopy facility on the 3rd floor. The first three Nikon TE300 inverted fluorescence microscopes were purchased in 2001 funded by grants from the Wellcome Trust to Professor Andrew Fry and from the BBSRC to Dr. Raj Patel.
In 2006 a Leica TCS SP5 confocal laser scanning microscope was added to the facility funded by a Wellcome Trust Equipment Grant to Professor Andrew Fry (lead applicant) and in 2009 a new Nikon microscope was purchased on a BBSRC grant from Dr. Kayoko Tanaka. With CIF funding from HEFCE in 2009 hardware and software upgrades have been applied to the Nikon TE300 microscopes.
Additional imaging equipment
In 2009 the facility was awarded a CIF grant (lead applicants professor Andrew Fry and Dr. Kees Straatman) for imaging equipment. This included a BD FACSCanto™ II and a Typhoon Trio+ Imager which can be found in room 3/32.
In the Adrian Building three microscopes were installed in the summer of 2007, funded by a grant from the Wolfson Foundation to Professor A. Brooks (lead applicant). The microscope facility can be found in room G1/G1a. The microscopes are an Olympus FV1000 confocal laser scanning microscope, an Olympus cell^R/scan^R combined system and a cytological/karyotyping system equipped with a digital camera and a spectral imager installed on a Olympus BX61 automated microscope. This system includes HiSKY, BandView/FISHView, CGHView, MultiSpecies, SPOTScan and RELOScan software. The stage is adapted with the ScanView Platform which can hold 8 slides.
Early 2010 the HEFCE funded Nikon C1Si confocal laser scanning microscope was installed in the Robert Kilpatrick Clinical Sciences Building within the leicester Royal Infirmary. This is the first site of the AIF a small walk distance away from the main campus. This system can be found in room 422.
In the Maurice Shock Medical Sciences Building (MSB) three microscope systems have been installed early 2010. These microscopes were funded via HEFCE and are an Olympus LV200 bioluminescence imaging system and a Nikon TIRF microscope, both in room MSB388 and a Zeiss multi photon laser scanning microscope in MSB383. Lab space to prepare material will be available in MSB326.
Since 2008 the facilities organizes workshops which are open to external participants. For more information please visit the workshop page.
Next workshops planned:
Immunolabelling; 20 August 2012
Fluorescence microscopy; 21 - 24 August 2012
Introduction to ImageJ; December 2012
Writing macros in ImageJ; December 2012
The Advanced Imaging Facilities would like to thank the following funding bodies for their generous funding:
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