CONFOCAL SCANNING MICROSCOPY ( SYCLOPS )

Confocal microscopy is a powerful technique that can be used to reveal fine details of many important biological processes. In confocal microscopy signal to noise is enhanced in two stages: first, by allowing focused incident wavelength light to fall on only a small area of the specimen the illuminating intensity is concentrated in the area of interest and decreases rapidly out of the plane of focus, and secondly, an appropriately placed aperture prevents fluorescent or scattered light travelling back from other parts of the sample to the detector. The sample is scanned in two dimensions and an image (e.g. a fluorescence map) is reconstructed from the detector response.

The SRS at Daresbury Laboratory is home to one of the UK's foremost research facilities in this area. SYCLOPS, the SYnchrotron radiation for ConfocaL OPtical Scanning microscopy, can combine ultraviolet (UV) synchrotron light from the SRS and/or a tuneable pulsed laser source with a confocal microscope, giving a flexible, wavelength-tuneable fluorescence microscope able to produce unparalleled high resolution images. This unique combination is helping probe the fine details of metabolism in cells, details of protein interactions (Mullineaux CW, Tobin MJ, Jones GR. Mobility of photosynthetic complexes in thylakoid membranes NATURE 390 (6658): 421-424 (1997), the mechanisms of signal transduction (M.L. Martin-Fernandez, M.J. Tobin, S.V. Jones, D.T. Clarke, and G.R. Jones (2002). Preformed Oligomeric EGF Receptors Undergo an Ectodomain Structure Change during Signalling. Biophys. J. 82:2415-2427.), or structural details on the process of adenovirus entry (M.L. Martin-Fernandez, S.V. Longshaw, I. Kirby, G. Santis, M.J. Tobin, D.T. Clarke, and G.R. Jones (2004). Adenovirus Type 5 Entry and Disassembly Followed in Living Cells by FRET, Fluorescence Anisotropy, and FLIM. Biophys. J. 87:1316-1327).

station 13.1a