Core Facilities

December 2011 - Image of the Month
December 2011, Pollen grains are an indispensable record of vegetation from the Earth’s past, and provide a unique window into the nature and timing of plant evolution. Pollen grains are also objects of considerable beauty, and their diversity of form has fascinated scientists since Malpighi and Grew first described them in the late 1600’s. In this image Croton hirtus (Euphorbiaceae), Mabea occidentalis (Euphorbiaceae) and Agropyron repens (Poaceae) provide a glimpse of the extraordinary morphological variety of pollen grains. Their shapes and surface textures were revealed using cutting-edge confocal microscopy at the IGB. This work is performed under a collaborative initiative by Mayandi Sivaguru from the IGB microscopy facility, Luke Mander and Surangi Punyasena at the Plant Biology Department. Image Provided by Luke Mander, Surangi Punyasena and Mayandi Sivaguru

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Image Provided by: Luke Mander, Surangi Punyasena and Mayandi Sivaguru

Mission

The Core Facilities at the IGB is a state-of-the-art resource for biological microscopy and image analysis. The core mission of the facility is to provide IGB faculty, as well as faculty from across campus with the tools and expertise to meet their imaging goals. In addition to providing technical assistance in acquiring and analyzing microscopy images the staff is also able to aid in designing and interpreting experiments. Check out this video to find out more about the Core Facilities.

Education

The Core Facilities train over one hundred new users a year on one or more instruments and are co-hosting a bioimaging camp for middle school girls with GAMES.

Our new user procedures guide new users through the training process.  To request training, please fill out our training request form.  Users have access to IGB disk space through the IGB computer and network resource group to transfer data.

Collaboration

In addition to the typical fee for training and instrument time, collaborations with the core facilities staff can be beneficial in the development of unique methods or capabilities.  Publications containing work performed in the core facilities should use these guidelines for acknowledging the core facilities.

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