Upright confocal microscope

• Subject Area: Plant Sciences
• Term: Funded in 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 564167316

The Chair for Plant Physiology as well as the Bioimaging Centre (BIC), the light microscopy core facility at the Department of Biology, both requires a widely applicable upright confocal microscope with high sensitivity and super-resolution options. In addition, the system should be capable to image large 3D volumes with low signal intensity at lower magnification albeit with exceptional signal to noise ratio. To this end, we apply for a confocal microscope equipped with rescanning optics to meet these requirements while providing the highest flexibility for different research projects coming to the BIC. The requested instrument will be used by the researchers of the Chair for Plant Physiology to study molecular mechanisms of endosomal trafficking, autophagy and membrane dynamics during abiotic stress responses in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The confocal microscope should be an upright model for easy handling of plant seedlings, especially for imaging immediately after buffer exchange. Imaging should be possible for standard fluorophores (GFP, RFP) and florescent dyes such as DAPI, Hoechst 33342, Alexa Fluor 488/561. The observation of subdomains of autophagosomes (~ 1 µm) as well as other cellular membranes requires imaging at high resolution. Experiments performed by BIC users involve imaging samples which require high sensitivity and imaging speed. The requested microscope should be equipped with a matrix detector, which can provide these capabilities. The high sensitivity is important for the analysis of multi-coloured samples, samples with weak fluorescence intensity, or bleaching prone samples. The capacity of the existing instruments at the BIC, especially for imaging challenging samples with low intensity signals or spanning over large volumes are almost fully booked and cannot cover the increasing demand of the researchers at the University of Konstanz. More than 15 user groups will also benefit from the availability of the requested confocal microscope which in the near future will replace an existing older instrument nearing its end of service date.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Aufrechtes konfokales Mikroskop
• Instrumentation Group: 5090 Spezialmikroskope
• Applicant Institution: Universität Konstanz
• Leader: Professorin Dr. Erika Isono