Mission
The objective of the Simultaneous Laser Scanning Imaging and Electrophysiology (SLSIE) Core is to provide state-of-the-art equipment and technical support for several experimental projects across the UAB campus related to mental retardation and the Mental Retardation Research Clinic Community mission statement.

Facility Description
The SLSIE Core is located in Room 429 of the Civitan International Research Center and is currently equipped with a dedicated microscope furnished with three continuous wave, visible lasers for conventional laser scanning confocal microscopy, and a patch clamp amplifier. The SLSIE Core is in the process of being upgraded for multi-photon excitation microscopy with a Chamaleon tunable (~730-950nm) laser system (Verdi 10W solid-state diode laser pumping a 90Mhz regeneratively mode-locked Ti:Sapphire laser, <80fsec pulse width, Coherent).

Technology and resources available at the SLSIE Core include the following: an Olympus Fluoview 300 Confocal Scanning System mounted on a Olympus BX50WI fixed stage upright fluorescence microscope equipped with water immersion lenses and Nomarski DIC-IR optics; a continuous wave Argon ion laser (488nm) for excitation of fluorescein-like fluorophores and two HeNe ion lasers (544nm, 633nm) for rhodamine- and Cy5-like fluorophores; a Hamamatsu Orca enhanced infrared-sensitive, cooled CCD digital camera for visually guided patch-clamping and low light, supra-video rate fluorescent imaging; an elevated platform mounted on X-Y remote controlled, motorized mechanical translators replacing the microscope stage; a temperature-controlled, perfusion brain slice chamber and peristaltic pump for artificial cerebrospinal fluid perfusion; two Burleigh patch-clamp solid-state piezoelectric manipulators mounted on the platform; an Axon Instruments Axopatch 1D patch-clamp amplifier; two extracellular isolated stimulators; one dual-channel digital storage oscilloscope; one analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog computer board; one Pentium workstation running Windows NT for acquisition, analysis, and storage of laser scanning imaging data; one G4 Mac running OSX for acquisition, analysis, and storage of electrophysiology and imaging data from the cooled CCD camera; and a TMC vibration isolation table.

Research Information
The SLSIE Core is a major resource for the Mental Retardation Research Center faculty. It provides state-of-the-art equipment unlikely to be acquired by any single investigator's research program, as well as highly trained staff for its maintenance. The shared use of the SLSIE Core provides synergistic support to several projects within the MRRC community including: advances and improvements of common methodological and conceptual strategies, access to regular and reliable analytical methods for live cell imaging, quantitative image processing, and additional collaborations between the individual projects.

The Core also provides simultaneous whole-cell recording and imaging of intracellular ion concentrations, presynaptic vesicle release and recycling, or morphological changes from single cells in culture or brain slices at sub-micrometer spatial and millisecond temporal resolution. Investigators can do high-resolution laser scanning and live imaging for long-term morphological studies of synapse formation, as well as time-lapse developmental studies of dendritic spines, dendritic arborizations, axonal projections, or astrocytic processes.

Services and Fees
The Core will provide training and assistance to MRRC investigators and their lab personnel. The assistance will be offered on an as-needed basis and investigators are allowed to run the microscope by themselves after training. A sign-up scheduling system is available on the website (http://www.mrrc.uab.edu/corec.htm). There are no service fees for the use of the Core. Interested investigators wishing to become MRRC investigators to gain access to all its Cores (http://www.mrrc.uab.edu/cores.html) should send their request to the MRRC Director, Dr. Michael Friedlander (934-0100, CIRC-137, mjf@nrc.uab.edu).

Contact Information
Co-Director: Lucas Pozzo-Miller, PhD
Email: pozzomiller@nrc.uab.edu
Phone: 205-975-4659

Co-Director: Harald Sontheimer, PhD
Email: hws@uab.edu
Phone: 205-975-5805

Website: http://www.mrrc.uab.edu/corec.htm

Approved by: Lucas Pozzo-Miller, PhD, Co-Director
Date: February 8, 2005

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