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With the assistance of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant and the skills of the biomedical scientists and research Florida State University has become a top global imaging center.

FSU has earned $2 million High-End Instrumentation (HEI) grant from the NIH. The one-year grant will assist FSU in the purchase of a state-of-the-art robotic electron microscope to advance cutting-edge studies of HIV/AIDS, heart disease, hypertension and cancer. The university has also set aside $2.8 million to fund more research.

"Installing this groundbreaking technology will place us among the very top imaging centers in the world," said FSU College of Arts and Sciences Dean Joseph Travis. The competition for HEI grants, which come from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a part of NIH, is "unbelievably tough" according to Dean Travis.

The $4.8 million will buy a fully automated cryo-electron microscope that provides rapid, 3-D imaging of frozen specimens around-the-clock via remote operation, then transmits them over the Internet. Researchers in biology and chemistry at FSU and colleagues at other institutions will get speedy collection of data and unprecedented constant access to the intricate interactions of individual proteins and molecular machines within the living cells of complex biological structures.

"Currently, the world's only working installation of this microscope is in Germany," Travis said. "In the U.S., FSU will have one of only four. The others will be installed at NIH itself; the University of California-Berkeley; and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at the University of California-San Diego -- all acknowledged as the best in the nation for structural biology and structural biological imaging. FSU soon will have capabilities unmatched by all but a few institutions in the nation."

Travis appreciated the rarity of a large HEI grant to be awarded to a single group of researchers rather than national centers or nationwide facilities serving multiple groups. "It's quite a testament to the scientific ingenuity of the group that will comprise the instrument's primary users, the importance of the work they do, and the commitment FSU has made to their research areas," he said.

"Innovative biomedical research requires frequent access to the newest and most advanced technology," said Barbara Alving, M.D., director of NCRR. "Such tools play key roles in the study of disease and the fundamental mechanisms of biological function, ultimately leading to new advances and treatments for diseases."
The microscope is expected to stand 16 feet high and weigh 1.7 tons. The FSU scientists will share this innovative tool once required renovations to the building in which it will be housed are completed in 2009.

"This instrument will be cutting-edge in several ways," said biological science Professor Kenneth Taylor, the principal investigator on FSU's award-winning grant application. "Not only is it robotic, collecting data continually without operation attention, in fact it can only be operated remotely," Taylor said. "There's no conventional 'binocular' for the user to view the image. What's more, the microscope can be operated and the images viewed by anyone in the U.S. with high-speed Internet capability and the required, specially designed workstation."

"When it is installed next year, our new-generation cryo-electron microscope will complement the sophisticated imaging components FSU already has in place at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and in labs on its main campus, and should attract an enormous amount of attention from the rest of the country," said FSU Vice President for Research Kirby Kemper. "As a result, we expect to draw even more of the nation's best students to Florida State for some of the world's best science research opportunities."

Adapted from a press release from FSU http://www.fsu.edu/news/2008/07/16/hei.grant/