Collecting high frame rate dual channel image stacks for simultaneous sarcomere and calcium tracking.
- Awards: Infrastructure Awards
Up-grade of an Olympus IX81 microscope to allow fast video acquisition of two fluorescent channels at once. This allows the collection of live cell data using two channels of colour simultaneously, to measure cellular contractility, and calcium from induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes. We will use this imaging modality to assess therapeutic compound effects on hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy cell lines. This microscope allows the use of rapid cellular phenotyping assays to test biological hypothesis about mechanisms of disease in both HCM and DCM.
These upgrades allow laser bleaching experiments (FRAP) to assess protein turnover in living cells to investigate how cardiomyocytes replace sarcomere proteins.