10 December 2009
Collaboration gives schools access to images of cutting-edge research
The University of Dundee has signed up to a national project allowing schoolchildren across the UK access to revealing images produced at the cutting-edge of life sciences research.
New images of the world-leading research being carried out in Dundee are being provided by the Light Microscopy Facility at the University’s College of Life Sciences for the CELLpics project. The project website aims to provide students and schools with images and movies created using research level equipment and techniques, and to illustrate specific points using animated clips and interactivity.
Staff will use the College’s OMX super-resolution microscope, one of only two in the UK and one of only a handful in the world, to capture images with twice the resolution of a conventional light microscope to reveal otherwise hidden features of the specimen.
CELLpics is operated by the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) in association with the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB). The aim of the website is to make interpreted images from specialist microscopes freely available to schools and students.
Dr Emma King, OMX Scientific Officer at the College of Life Sciences, said she was delighted to be part of the project and helping to generate interest in science amongst youngsters.
'The detail on these images is staggering,' she said. 'We only took delivery of the OMX a year ago, and it’s great that we are already able to share our knowledge-based resources with school students just setting out on their exploration of life sciences.'
'We are committed to a culture of knowledge-sharing and ensuring that our research has the maximum impact at every level of education.'
The first OMX image found on the CELLPics website shows the microvilli (very small hair-like projections) on the luminal surface of epitheleal cells in a mouse’s small intestine. There are about 2000 microvilli per epitheleal cell that are used to increase the surface area of the cell for the active uptake of chemicals.
Human diseases like Coeliac Disease, which affects 1 in every 100 people in the UK, cause inflamed intestinal mucosa and patients often have deformed villi.
This is the first time that images of cells produced using state-of-the-art technologies has been made available to secondary school students of Biology and Chemistry. The impact of CELLpics and its range of cutting-edge images is already far-reaching, and the website plans to make more images from the College of Life Sciences available online.
In addition to the CIMR and the BSCB, collaborators in the project include the universities of Dundee, London and St Andrews. Wellcome Images, part of the Wellcome Trust, supply many of the images.
The OMX microscope if funded by the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA), a strategic partnership between the universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Strathclyde, and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). By linking researchers together and pooling resources, SULSA provides Scottish life scientists with the state-of-the-art technologies they need to retain their competitive edge.
The images can be viewed online at http://cellpics.cimr.cam.ac.uk/
For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
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