UT Awarded NIH Grant for Advanced Microscope To Power Biomedical Research

The University of Texas at Austin will be home to the first light sheet microscope in the Austin region, thanks to a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The specialized microscope will advance a wide range of biomedical research - from developing new therapies for retinal diseases and Parkinson's disease to studying scoliosis, stroke, mitochondrial disorders, substance use disorders, motor control disorders and spina bifida.

UT will purchase a ZEISS Lightsheet 7 Fluorescence Microscope with funding from NIH's S10 Shared Instrumentation Grant Program. The microscope will allow UT researchers to image large, delicate samples more rapidly and gently than is possible with traditional microscopes.

The NIH's S10 Instrumentation Program supports the purchase of state-of-the-art instruments that would otherwise be too expensive for any single investigator or lab. At least 17 UT researchers connected to 29 NIH-sponsored projects across the Cockrell School of Engineering, Dell Medical School, College of Natural Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and College of Pharmacy plan to use the microscope in their work.

"We are thrilled to bring the latest technologies in light microscopy to UT Austin. With the new light sheet microscope, researchers will be able to view intact biological samples from entirely new perspectives to gain fresh insights into human health and disease," said Stephanie Seidlits, associate professor of biomedical engineering and the lead principal investigator on the grant. Seidlits' own work uses mouse tissue and engineered tissues to better understand how the brain works, with the goal of developing therapies for substance use disorders, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and schizophrenia.

Researchers from many disciplines, both from UT Austin and outside organizations, will be able to use the microscope when it's installed later this year in the Moffett Molecular Biology Building at the Microscopy and Flow Cytometry Facility, a core research facility that is part of the Center for Biomedical Research Support. The Microscopy and Flow Cytometry team will provide technical support to researchers in training, experiment planning, sample preparation and analysis.

"This award represents more than 10 years of planning, effort and collaboration among researchers across campus," said Anna Webb, director of the Microscopy and Flow Cytometry Facility. "A light sheet microscope has long been on our wish list for expanding UT's imaging infrastructure, and it's a true honor to receive funding to finally bring this capability to our research community."

Light sheet fluorescence microscopes are designed for rapid, three-dimensional imaging of living samples, and they are widely used in developmental biology and neuroscience research. Unlike laser scanning microscopes, which pass laser light through an entire sample, a light sheet microscope illuminates only the plane being imaged at any given moment. That makes it far gentler on living tissue, which laser exposure can damage.

"We'll be able to visualize biological structures within their natural context without having to cut samples into small sections to fit traditional microscopes," Webb said. "Delicate, living organisms can be imaged rapidly over long periods of time, when other microscopes would either fail to capture these fast changes or damage the organism we're trying to observe."

Operation of the microscope - including the data storage, networking and computing infrastructure needed to make its output accessible and research-ready - will be supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors, with additional support from the College of Natural Sciences, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the College of Pharmacy and Dell Medical School.