About Us

The Michael Hooker Microscopy Facility is a research light microscopy facility providing advanced digital light microscopy, image processing and analysis resources to users from the UNC Chapel Hill campus.

We offer instrumentation and instruction to enable users to acquire, process and analyze images from a wide variety of sample types. 

 Techniques

Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy (3 systems)

• 4-color fluorescence + DIC = 5 channel imaging, Visible & UV excitation
• Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) up to 80 fps
• Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET)
• Fast X-Z scanning
• 3D &/or time lapse image acquisition
• Spectral Imaging – dye unmixing
• Co-localization
• Time lapse

Live Cell Imaging

• 3-color Spinning-disk Confocal (FITC, Texas Red & CY5 like dyes)
• Computerized control of light exposure
• Simultaneous fluorescence and transmitted light (DIC)
• FRET pairs - CFP/YFP, FITC/TRITC, GFP/mCherry, etc.
• Heated stages
• Temperature and environmental control

Advanced and Standard Widefield microscopy

• Ratio imaging on an inverted microscope, e.g. Ca²+ Fura-2
• Dual camera imaging
• Phase contrast and DIC/Nomarski
• Time-lapse (fluorescence and transmitted light)
• Intensified CCD camera for high sensitivity

Laser micro-dissection system (Leica AS-LMD)

• Isolation of subcellular and tissue regions for DNA/RNA amplification or mass spectroscopy

Color brightfield imaging (high resolution)

• Nikon DXM 1200 pixel shift color camera (11 MegaPixels)

Image Processing and Analysis

• Co-localization
• Particle tracking
• 3-D Image rendering
• Fluorescence quantification
• Densitometry
• Area measurements
• Time lapse analysis

Personnel

Michael Chua
6007 Thurston Bowles
843-3268
microscopy@unc.edu

Neal Kramarcy
6129 Thurston Bowles
966-7051

Equipment

• Confocal:
• Zeiss 510 META Laser Scanning Confocal with 458, 488, 512, 543, 633 nm lasers
• Leica SP2 AOBS Laser Scanning Confocal with 4 lasers (351, 364, 458, 488, 514, 561, 633 nm)
• PE Yokogawa Spinning-disk Confocal with 3-line Kr/Ar laser
• Olympus FV1000 Confocal with 405, 440, 488, 514, 559, 635 laser lines with Ti:sapphire multiphoton excitation, motorized x-y stage, box incubator, SIM scanner.
• Widefield Microscopes:
• Leica DMIRB inverted microscope with Black and White and color digital cameras; 5X-100X
• Nikon upright microscope with color digital camera, 2X-100X
• Nikon Elcipse 80i upright with DIC, phase, fluorescence
• Nikon TE2000 inverted microscope with ratio imaging, DIC and phase contrast, 2X-100X
• Leica MZ16FA Stereo/macroscope, motorized z-axis & filter changer
• Environmental Control:
• Bioptechs heated stage system
• Zeiss Temperature Control system
• AirTherm air current incubator
• NuAir 95% humidified 5% CO₂ incubator
• Tokai Hit
• Refrigerator (4^oC)
• Other:
• Laser micro-dissection system (Leica)
• Topometrix Explorer Atomic Force Microscope
• Laser power meter
• Image Processing/Analysis:
• 4 Windows based image analysis workstations
• Acquisition and analysis software packages
• C-Imaging SimplePCI – measurements, 2D deconvolution
• Metamorph 7 off line
• Volocity – 3D/4D, quantification, co-localization, tracking - license server for remote use.
• Zeiss AIM with 3D, Physiology, time lapse, FRAP, FRET
• Leica LCS software with FRET, FRAP
• Adobe Creative suite, Premiere, MS-Office, etc.
• Solid dye color printer
• Flat bed scanner reflected/transparency
• File server RAID terabyte networked for Windows/Mac
• CD/DVD writers, USB, Firewire connections