In July of 2001, the Neuroscience Program was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for the purchase a Zeiss LSM-5 confocal microscope which was installed in April, 2002.

The microscope will be used to enhance and expand existing research programs. Specifically, the instrument will be used to investigate:
1) the cellular organization of developing inner ear cells (L.Binachi, Neuroscience);
2) the developmental fate of mammalian epiblast cells (Y.Cruz, Biology);
3) the shape and orientation of neurons that release or respond to gonodotropin releasing hormones (M.Loose, Neuroscience);
4) the structural abnormalities of muscle cells from mutant C. elegans (T.Allen, Biology);
5) the projections of lateral line and inner ear neurites (C.McCormick, Biology/Neuroscience);
6) the organization of the teleost forebrain (M.Braford, Biology/Neuroscience).
All of these ongoing projects will benefit from the increased cellular detail and resolution provided by confocal microscopy.       

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The big advantage of confocal microscopy is the possibility to collect light exclusively from a single plane. A pinhole sitting conjugated to the focal plane (i.e.confocal) keeps light from the detector that is reflected/emitted from others than the focal plane. The laser scanning microscope scans the sample sequentially point by point and line by line and assembles the pixel information to one image. That way optical slices of the specimen are imaged with high contrast and high resolution in x, y and z. By moving the focus plane single images (optical slices) can be put together to build up a three dimensional stack that can be digitally processed afterwards.