A microscope facility for a new molecular bioscience building

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This proposal is for a microscope facility to be housed in a new molecular bioscience building at the University of Bath. The equipment will be used to support multidisciplinary research in to gene function in plants, microbes and insects and is essential for the research programmes described. Our molecular biosciences research encompasses fundamentals of development, cell signalling, reproductive biology and microbial pathogenesis of insects and falls into following main areas:- (1) seed biology, the manipulation of seed size and its relationship to genomic imprinting, (2) hormone and G protein related signalling pathways in Arabidopsis, (3) novel insecticide discovery and mechanisms of insecticide resistance, (4) cell-cell recognition mechanisms in plant reproduction, including inter- and intraspecific pollen-stigma recognition and sperm biology, and (5) endosomal trafficking in plants. Our approaches, using the equipment requested, will provide detailed information at the molecular, cellular and organismal level on the consequences of disrupting or manipulating normal gene function in relation to each of the areas outlined above. These studies will extend our knowledge in these areas of biology, generate high impact publications and will be of interest to a range of end users. A multitude of the techniques used in the research proposed in this application require a high resolution fluorescence microscope with confocal capabilities, suitably equipped for imaging a range of fluorescent labels and stained/unstained tissues. In addition much of the work requires manipulation and analysis of larger specimens which requires a range of stereoscopic zoom microscopes.