| UD Research
Covered with spikes, a grain of pollen from a dahlia resembles a medieval mace when magnified a million times.
The stomata of a plant? Millions of these microscopic pores cover the leaves, the stem, all the plant parts not buried in the soil. Guard cells open and close these mini-mouths to allow carbon dioxide, oxygen, water and minerals in and out of the plant. Tipped off by beneficial bacteria way down at the plant roots, the guard cells can signal the stomata to close to keep out disease-causing bacteria, recent UD research has shown.
UD’s Bio-Imaging Center is helping researchers to unmask some of the mysteries of life, exposing phenomena ranging from yeast to blood platelets at awe-inspiring resolution, as well as assisting scientists venturing into nanomaterials development.
The staff has expertise with a variety of high-tech microscopes—atomic force, confocal, electron, wide-field—and their skills are in demand by researchers on campus and at other academic institutions and industries in the region.
The center’s newest addition is a
super-resolution microscope on lease from Carl Zeiss Inc. Nature Methods declared super-resolution microscopy the Method of the Year in 2008 for its anticipated role in revolutionizing understanding of cellular biology. With it, scientists can look at a single molecule.
Jeff Caplan, the center’s associate director, calls it “an amazing tool.” And for someone who is used to doing things like live-cell imaging and laser capture microdissection, that’s saying something. Caplan currently is investigating stromules, the tube-like extensions that connect the photosynthesis engines called chloroplasts to the nuclei in plant cells. He wants to understand how these connectors function, particularly in plant immunity.
Donna Woulfe, assistant professor of biological sciences, is using the new scope to visualize microparticles formed from blood platelets and identify particular lipids exposed on the surfaces of both the microparticles and platelets, which can be specifically labeled with antibodies.
Why is this important? “Some studies suggest that shedding of platelet microparticles takes place to a greater extent in patients with cardiovascular disease than in healthy patients,” Woulfe notes.
The Bio-Imaging Center is jointly housed at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the Department of Biological Sciences at UD.
by Tracey Bryant
Learn more at bioimaging.dbi.udel.edu
www.udel.edu/researchmagazine |
Kathy F. Atkinson
| UD Research
Through the looking glass
The microscope has come
a long way since young
Zacharias Janssen built the first one, in Middleburg,
Holland, circa 1595. It could make objects look up to 10 times larger. Today, UD’s Bio-Imaging Center staff can illuminate a single molecule and so much more. . . .
Learn more at bioimaging.dbi.udel.edu
www.udel.edu/researchmagazine |
Kathy F. Atkinson