Institute of Child Health

Confocal Microscopy Core Facility

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• Data storage

Laboratory services

The confocal microscopy Core Facility at the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH) and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) provides state of the art instrumentation for imaging and data analysis.

The facility is equipped with two confocal microscopes:

• Leica TCS SP2 (with 2-photon capability)
• Zeiss LSM 710

The systems allow a range of experiments with fixed or live samples with environmental chambers (control of temperature and gases) available on all systems making it possible to perform experiments over long time courses. More specialised imaging experiments including spectral imaging, FRET and FRAP can also be performed on the confocal microscopes.

An hourly charge is applied for use and training on the confocal microscopes.

Confocal microscopes

We have two confocal microscopes:

• Leica TCS SP2 (excitation: 405, 458, 476, 488, 514, 543 and 633 nm) with 2-photons capability (Spectra Physics Tsunami/Saphire laser tuning range from 755 nm to 925 nm)
• Zeiss LSM 710 (excitation: 405, 458, 488, 514, 561, 594 and 633 nm)

Services available include:

• user training
• user assistance and machine troubleshooting
• design of experiments
• sourcing of reagents and techniques; finding alternative approaches
• data acquisition
• data analysis and interpretation
• data presentation.

We are also open to collaboration.

Location

Room 153, First floor, Philip Ullmann Laboratories, ICH (Confocal microscopes)

Room 301, Third floor, Wellcome Trust Building (Time-lapse microscope)

Room W2.09, Second Floor Wellcome Trust Building (Facility office)

Opening times

From 8am to 10:30pm, 7 days a week.
Facility staff are available Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm.

Guidelines for the use of the facility are provided on these web pages. Please ensure you have read the relevant guidelines to maximise the success and validity of your experiment.

• Book or check availability of a confocal microscope (ICH and UCL registered users only)