Instructor of Medicine Hani Suleiman, MD, PhD, will be speaking at the inaugural symposium celebrating the designation of Washington University Center for Cellular Imaging (WUCCI) as a Nikon Center of Excellence (NCE) in live cell and super-resolution microscopy. The title of Dr. Suleiman’s talk is Super-resolution Imaging of the Actin Cytoskeleton of Kidney Podocytes.
The goal of the symposium is to spotlight how Nikon’s advanced imaging instrumentation at WUCCI has facilitated and enabled research here at Washington University.
An NCE consists of a mutually beneficial partnership between a research institution and Nikon. The institution gains access to state-of-the-art research microscopes and Nikon’s technical knowledge, while Nikon gains a showcase for its products and a location for training. NCEs are located worldwide, and each has a specialty that helps advance a specific area of microscopy.
The NCE within WUCCI allows researchers to study the dynamic behavior of single molecules and the spatial organization of cells and tissues using confocal, live-cell and super-resolution microscopies.
Nikon systems available at WUCCI include:
- Nikon A1Rsi Scanning Confocal Microscope – suitable for a broad range of applications including spectral and rapid imaging.
- Nikon Spinning Disk (SD) Confocal Microscope – for high-magnification 4D imaging of living cells with minimal effects of photo-damage.
- N-SIM Super-Resolution Structured Illumination Microscope – allows for sub-diffraction super-resolution imaging using high-frequency structured illumination in three-dimensions for resolutions beyond 100 nm.
- N-STORM Super-Resolution TIRF Microscope – with a resolution of ~20 nm, allows imaging in great detail of in vitro and in vivo structures such as the molecular components of the actin and microtubular filaments as well as the components of the kidney glomerular basement membrane (around 200 nm thick structure).
Dr. Suleiman’s was recently awarded an AWRP Summer 2016 Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association and a Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network Career Development Fellowship, for studies that will utilize the WUCCI facilities. His work was recently featured in an interview by NephCure Kidney International.
The NCE inaugural symposium will be held Monday, September 18, 2017, in the Cori Auditorium in the McDonnell Medical Science Building from 12:00 pm – 4:30 pm.
A buffet lunch will precede opening remarks by Wash U and Nikon. Presentations of research will follow. The symposium will then move to WUCCI, in the basement of the 4515 McKinley Building, for a ribbon cutting ceremony and remarks by Dean David Perlmutter, MD, and VC for Research Jenny Lodge, PhD, followed by a reception. See program here.