SPAIN
Barcelona Live and Intravital - Advanced Light Microscopy Node (BLivIN)
The Barcelona Live and Intravital - Advanced Light Microscopy Node offers expert support to biomedical projects that require functional live cell and animal imaging. BLivIN provides its expertise on robust and innovative technologies ranging from widefield fluorescence and transmitted optical microscopy to laser confocal microscopy, spinning disc confocal microscopy, non-linear microscopy (2photon excitation, 2PE and second harmonic generation, SHG) and TIRF Microscopy. Additionally, the functional imaging technologies offered by the Node are fully extended by a strong support on image processing, analysis and custom developed solutions. In order to promote the visitor projects' success, BLivIN grants custom planning and support in all the phases of the project execution, from the design of experiments and sample processing to experimental setup and analysis. Also, access to complementary resources will be provided (animal facilities, wet lab, cell culture, non-invasive bioluminescence imaging).
Specialties and expertise of the Node
This Node offers its scientific and technological expertise, in order to extract functional information from Advanced BioImaging applications. Their areas of expertise are:
- Functional imaging (Photobleaching techniques, FLIM/FRET based on Time Correlated Single Photon Counting.
- High Content Automated Live Cell Imaging: Long-term imaging and multiposition imaging (mosaics, multi-well plates).
- Intravital microscopy of rodents: abdominal organs, intravenous vital fluorescent contrast
- Non linear applications (2PE- Laurdan imaging, 2PE- functional live cell, 2PE- intravital imaging, Second Harmonic Generation)
- Laser Nanosurgery: Ablation in living cells and tissues with pulsed laser irradiation, combining spinning disc or widefield microscopy
- Image Analysis: Four BioImage Analysts develop workflows of analysis and BioImage data interpretation. Teaching the use of commercial and Open-source software tools is offered and, when insufficient to extract results, dedicated development of custom workflows that can combine packages and algorithms is set in place. Special tools for in vivo imaging tracking or custom deconvolution are available.
Offered Technologies:
- Deconvolution widefield microscopy
- Laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM)
- Spinning disc confocal microscopy
- Multiphoton systems
- Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRF)
- Fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM)
- Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)
- Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP)
Additional services offered at the Node
- Instruments and technical assistance to run instruments
- Methodological setup (e.g. design of study protocol and standard operation procedures)
- Training in infrastructure use
- Probe preparation
- Animal facilities (UB)
- Wet lab space
- Server space
- Data processing and analysis
- Training workstations
- Training seminar rooms
- Housing facilities (UB)
Instrument highlights
High content- Intelligent Imaging: Rare event detection imaging, i.e. imaging a large number of positions continuously and perform high-resolution imaging only on specific location at a specific time point, detected by live image analysis. Laser Nanosurgery: Spinning disk or widefield microscopes are equipped with pulsed lasers to perform cellular or intracellular ablation in living cells and tissues.
Contact details
Maria Calvo
CCiT- University of Barcelona-microscopy facility manager
mariacalvo@ub.edu
+34934037159