ABSTRACT This grant application requests funding support for the purchase of a shared Confocal Microscope System with a high-resolution detector to be installed in the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center Cellular Imaging Core, a shared microscopy facility at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). The requested instrument combines enhancements in high signal-to-noise ratio, fast acquisition speed and enhanced resolution that are not achievable by other instruments available in the area. These features will benefit a growing number of NIH-funded research studies at BCH and Harvard Medical School that require sub-cellular localization of proteins in fixed and living tissue at high acquisition speeds. Other research programs that need high-resolution & high-throughput screening for translational applications will benefit immensely from this instrument. After installation in the Cellular Imaging Core in the Department of Neurobiology and F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at BCH, this state-of-the-art microscope will benefit the 84 Harvard Medical School area laboratories that use the core facility for basic and translational research. Primary Investigators from these labs will use the system to study a wide variety of pressing questions regarding organelle mobility and dynamics, subcellular architecture, protein-protein and cell-cell interactions, and the relations of these basic processes in normal brain development, in axon regeneration and neuronal survival, and in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders.

PROJECT NARRATIVE This grant application requests funding for an advanced confocal microscope system that will be housed in a shared instrument facility in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston. The instrument is capable of high-speed and high-sensitivity imaging at enhanced resolution without damaging the tissue or the signal from the samples. The addition of this instrument will greatly enhance imaging and further understanding of human disease leading to development of novel therapeutics.