| Carolyn Larabell and Mark Le
Gros have been awarded $2.5 million from NIH and DOE to establish
a first-of-its-kind x-ray microscope to perform “cat scans”
of biological cells, and other unprecedented capabilities for cell and
molecular biology studies. The National
Center for X-ray Tomography also promises a better understanding of
human diseases at the molecular level and possibly new discoveries for
treating those diseases. The microscope, dubbed XM-2, is poised to bridge
the gap between light microscopy and electron microscopy. “X-ray
microscopy can bridge this gap by combining some of the best features
associated with light and electron microscopy, plus bringing in some entirely
new capabilities,” Larabell recently said during a Berkeley
Lab View
interview. At a resolution of 10 nm (about the size of a protein),
a complete data set for an x-ray tomography image should require less
than three minutes, compared to the days and even weeks required for electron
microscopy. The microscope will be an NIH Biomedical Technology Resource
Center at the ALS, which means the instrument will be available to biomedical
researchers throughout the nation. In addition to construction funding,
NIH and DOE will contribute about $1.3 million to run the microscope for
each of its first five years of operation. |
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