Experiential Learning

FAU Undergraduates Earn Credit While Training on Cutting-Edge Microscope

In a darkened corner room of the new Zeiss Microscopy Solutions Center on the campus of Florida Atlantic University’s John D. MacArthur Campus, three students huddled around their instructor as he carefully placed a slide into a microscope, explaining his every move as he proceeded.

This wasn’t just any microscope. The Zeiss LSM 980 confocal system with an airyscan detector is an ultra high-tech scientific imaging instrument that requires months of formal training from a head scientist to properly operate. The students, undergraduates from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, had a rare opportunity to train on an instrument most budding scientists won’t encounter until graduate school or later. They are part of a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) called Honors Microscopy, which provides hands-on research practice in a credit-bearing, classroom laboratory environment.

“In our class, the students are investigating the role in synapse formation of a guidance receptor called Down-syndrome cell adhesion molecule 1 (Dscam 1), using a neuromuscular junction of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) larvae as a model system,” said Casey Spencer, Ph.D., postdoctoral neuroscience instructor at the Wilkes Honors College. “Through this course, we seek to better understand Dscam 1’s control in synapse formation.”

The class is comprised of eight students broken into four groups. Each group was tasked with characterizing the gene using a varying genetic expression of Dscam 1.

This lab was the students’ first introduction to the confocal system. Spencer, with the guidance of Nicolai Urban, Ph.D., user experience scientist for Zeiss, took the students through a step-by-step primer of the microscope. The example specimen was a piece of neuromuscular tissue from a fruit fly larva. The target of the day’s lab was to pinpoint and image the neurons in the muscle that control movement. The specimen was barely visible to the naked eye, yet, with a few keystrokes to set the focus parameters, the instrument whirred to life, and a detailed, technicolor image illuminated a computer screen attached to the microscope.

“Using confocal microscopy provides precision details of the changes to synapse structure, and the functional components of the synapse associated with these genetic variants compared versus control samples,” Spencer said.

Spencer set the focus on an area of interest on the sample, characterized by the fluorescent proteins that had been added to the dissected samples to target and label Dscam1. The students examined the area while Spencer prompted them to explain what they saw, and they agreed this was a desirable point to scan. As Spencer set the imaging parameters, he explained that once he initiated the imaging process, the instrument would take a series of 80 photos. These pictures would create a detailed, three-dimensional image of the dissected tissue that the students would later examine as part of their research project.

By the end of the semester, the students will complete a highly technical neuroscience research project using microscopy. And, they will have received the necessary training to operate the Zeiss LSM 980 confocal system – an impressive achievement to add to an undergraduate researcher’s curriculum vitae.