Confocal microscope for the fluorescent imaging of cells

• Subject Area: Molecular Chemistry ; Biological Chemistry and Food Chemistry
• Term: Funded in 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438052747

Fluorescent labelling plays not only an increasing role in chemical bioanalytics and molecular diagnostics but also in the fast growing research area of molecular imaging of living cells. The research training group and many other third-party funded research projects of the participating and preparative working research groups at KIT focus on this subject. There is no confocal microscope available for these research groups and in particular not to the doctoral researchers and coworkers to independently perform cell biological experiments for fluorescent cell imaging. Such microscopy experiments must be performed only in collaboration and on highly specialized and advanced microscopes. This limits the cellular experiments very much, because the investigations of the newly synthesized and fluorescent probes and conjugates from the mainly preparative working research groups, who are participating in this proposal, overburden the specialized collaboration partners. Expecially the basic experiments, such as transfection studies, fluorescent labelling of biopolymers inside cells or the observation of energy transfer-based architectures in cells could be performed independently by the doctoral researchers themselves, of course after instruction by the person who is responsible for the new microscope. For this purpose, highly specialized microscopes are not necessary, which are built for advanced studies and available in the collaborating specialized research groups that are not participating in this proposal. With the proposed basic microscope the doctoral researchers and coworkers are able to perform basic application experiments and optimizations time independently from the specialized collaboration partner. Note only Interdisciplinary competences were gained but also time savings by the individual researchers and the overall projects. The doctoral researchers bring already the right and interdisciplinary competences by the curriculum of the studying program "Chemical Biology" at KIT.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Konfokalmikroskop für die fluoreszente Bildgebung von Zellen
• Instrumentation Group: 5090 Spezialmikroskope
• Applicant Institution: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
• Leader: Professor Dr. Hans-Achim Wagenknecht