Core Facilities
Resources
The Core Facilities at the IGB is a state-of-the-art resource for biological microscopy and image analysis. The core mission of the facility is to provide IGB faculty, as well as faculty from across campus with the tools and expertise to meet their imaging goals. In addition to providing technical assistance in acquiring and analyzing microscopy images the staff is also able to aid in designing and interpreting experiments.
What Core Facilities can offer
Twenty-four hour access
The Core is available 24 hours a day to support your research endeavors.
Education and Training
The Core Facilities trains hundreds of new users each year on one or more instruments, and are as essential portion of the IGB’s Pollen Power summer camp program, bringing middle-school age children from local communities to engage with the Core.
Our new user procedures guide users through the training process. To request training (theory training is required for most microscopes including LSM 700, LSM 710, Apotome, SR-SIM, before the hands-on training), please fill out our training request form. Users have access to IGB disk space through the IGB computer and network resources group to transfer data. To request access to the IGB building, please fill out the IGB Connect Access Request.
Training pages can be found here.
Collaboration
In addition to the typical fee for training and instrument time, collaborations with the core facilities staff can be beneficial in the development of unique methods or capabilities. Publications containing work performed in the core facilities should use these guidelines for acknowledging the core facilities. Download a copy of our brochure.
The IGB Core cooperates with the following facilities on campus to provide an extensive selection of instrumentation to campus researchers:
Lunch with the Core
The IGB Core Facilities hosts a seminar series each semester covering instrumentation in the Core and research taking place in the Core. Previous Lunch with the Core information can be found below.
- 2024
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February 14, 2024 "Integrating Live Confocal Microscope Imagery of Plant Stomata with Gas Exchange Measurements" - Joseph Crawford, Postdoctoral Research Associate - Plant Biology
Instrument: LSM 710
Joe's talk can be found here.
February 28, 2024 "Introduction to STEDYCON: A Confocal and STED System with Super-resolution Capabilities" - Umnia Doha, Research Scientist - Core Facilities
Instrument: STEDYCON
Umnia's talk can be found here.
March 6, 2024 "X-Ray Computed Tomography in the Core Facility: Research and Manufacturing Applications of the NSI X5000" - Dr. Austin Cyphersmith, Assistant Director of Research Instrumentation - Core Facilities
Instrument: X5000
Austin's talk can be found here.
March 27, 2024 "3D Data Analysis and Segmentation Tools" - Dr. Kingsley Boateng, Assistant Director of Bioscience Research & Microscopy - Core Facilities
Instrument: Amira & Imaris Software
Kingsley's talk can be found here.
April 3, 2024 "Revolutions in Data" - Dan Davidson, Director of CNRG and Research Computing - Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Dan's talk can be found here.
April 10, 2024 "A solid-liquid superposition model for interfacial solvation structures" - Qian Ai, Graduate Research Assistant - Materials Science & Engineering April 17, 2024 "Introduction to BookitLab" - Dr. Glenn Fried, Director of the Core Facilities April 24, 2024 "Introducing Spatial Transcriptomics to Core Facilities: A Custom Built MERFISH Microscope " - Duncan Nall, Research Scientist - Core Facilities
Instrument: MERFISH
May 1, 2024 "Creating Art of Science" - Julia Pollack, Creative Program Manager - Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology September 4, 2024 "Introduction to the Core Facilities" - All Core Facilities Staff Members, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Instrument: Various Core Instruments
September 11, 2024 "Using the Axio Scan.Z1 and Ultramicroscope to characterize and quantify maternal-to-fetal molecule trafficking in a murine model of maternal immune activation" - Rafael Jaime Gonzalez Ricon, MSc - Neuroscience Program
Instrument: Axio Scan.Z1 & Ultramicroscope
September 18, 2024 "Insights into Nuclear Speckles in Mammalian Cells Using Super-Resolution Microscopy" - Minxue Liu, Graduate Research Assistant, Beckman Institute - Cell & Developmental Biology
Instrument: MINFLUX
October 2, 2024
"Scalable Analysis of Cell State Dynamics with Computational Imaging and Deep Learning" - Dr. Shalin Mehta, Platform Leader of Computational Microscopy - Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco
October 9, 2024 "Round Table Discussion" - Dr. Glenn Fried, Director of the Core Facilities - Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Topic: Core Facilities
October 23, 2024 "Assessing the Impact of Paraben on Uterine Collagen Architecture: An Integrated Approach Using SHG, AFM, and Nanoindentation" - Mahmuda Arshee, Graduate Teaching Assistant - Mechanical Science & Engineering
October 30, 2024 "A MINFLUX view of phage infection" - Ayesha Bhikha, Graduate Research Assistant - Physics & Wenqing Zhu, Graduate Research Assistant - Physics
Instrument: MINFLUX
November 6, 2024 "Age and Sex-Dependent Morphological Differences within the Neuromuscular Junction of Gastrocnemius and Diaphragm " - Sarah Asif, Ph.D Student - Neuroscience Program, Martha Gillette's Lab
November 20, 2024 "Molecular Structure-Specific Bioimaging with Spectral Precision: Raman Imaging Comes of Age" - Ashok Samuel, Research Associate Professor - The Grainger College of Engineering
- 2023
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March 1, 2023 "An Introduction to the Zeiss LSM 900: With Super-resolution and Deconvolution Capability" - Dr. Austin Cyphersmith, Assistant Director of Research Instrumentation, Core Facilities at IGB
Instrument: LSM 900
Austin's talk: https://youtu.be/95MB2DQW_BQ
March 8, 2023 "Computer services at the IGB" - Dan Davidson, Director of Computer and Network Resource Group - IGB
Topic: Computer Services
Dan's talk: https://youtu.be/UHJ_EwEsC_Y
March 22, 2023 "Keyence Microscope Demo" - Scott Waddle
Instrument: Keyence Microscopes
March 29, 2023 "Identification of structural model of mammalian meiotic synaptonemal complex with super-resolution scope (MINFLUX)" - Reza Rajabi Toustani, Postdoc Research Associate, Department of Comparative Biosciences, College of Veterinary Medicine
Instrument: Minflux
April 5, 2023 "Crafting the Art of Science: a Sneak Peek Behind the Scenes" - Julia Pollack, Creative Program Manager, IGB
Topic: Art of Science
Julia's talk: https://youtu.be/67atM0TjTWw
April 12, 2023 "Mechanics to microstructure: Image-based modeling of the extracellular matrix" - Callan Luetkemeyer, Adjunct Assistant Professor, The Grainger College of Engineering, MechSE April 19, 2023 "Single cell spatial transcriptomic analysis of adult honeybee phenotypes" - Alex Schrader, Chemistry Doctoral Candidate, Han Lab
Instrument: Widefield Microscope
September 20, 2023 "An Introduction to the Core Facilities" - Dr. Glenn Fried, Director of the IGB Core Facilities
Instruments located in the Core Facilities can be found here.
Glenn's talk: https://youtu.be/2ufeSdnoubM
September 27, 2023 "Firing of in-vitro hippocampal neuronal network depends on the mechanical tension" - Md Saddam Hossain Joy, Graduate Teaching Assistant - Mechanical Science & Engineering
Instrument: LSM 880
Md Saddam Hossain Joy's talk: https://youtu.be/TgGTQ7Wqfyc
October 11, 2023 "Super-Resolution Imaging of AMPA Receptors in Brain Tissue" - Rohit Vaidya, Graduate Research Assistant - Physics
Instrument: LSM 880 & Cryostat
Rohit's talk: https://youtu.be/BGL0wWa7e7o
October 25, 2023 "Biocluster: New Features and New Computing" - Daniel Davidson
Topic: Biocluster
Dan's talk: https://youtu.be/KFZXtwnsHQU
November 1, 2023 "Further Insights into Kinesin Motility Using MINFLUX: A Super-Resolution Nanoscopic Method (Kinesin Motility: Characterizing the Half-Steps and Backsteps)" - Devinda Pankaja Wijewardena, Grad. Research Asst. - Physics - Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Instrument: MINFLUX
November 8, 2023 "Volume Electron Microscopy: Concepts, Correlations and Computations" - Kedar Narayan, Ph.D - Senior Scientist, NIH
Kedar's talk: https://youtu.be/4tSG_rh8oMg
Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center
The Illinois Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center (CBC) and IGB’s integrated suite of next-gen instrumentation is available for users to conduct cutting-edge Omics analyses within the three-dimensional (3D) structural, compositional and formational history of any given sample.
Samples can be composed of tissues, cells, or a combination including biomineral deposits (e.g., bones, teeth, ectopic calcification). The IGB Core Facility provides 3D micro-CT x-ray structural scans at a resolution of 3-100 microns (depending on sample size, shape and composition), coupled with micron-scale Raman characterization of the mineralogical composition of embedded biomineral deposits. High-quality histology sections and petrographic thin sections can be strategically prepared and further interrogated using optical and electron microscopes available within the IGB Core Facility.
Analysis of these samples are done through the DNA Services, Cytometry and Microscopy to Omics (CMtO), and High Performance Computing Bioinformatics (HPCBio) facilities within the CBC, able to conduct cell cytometry analysis and sorting, 10X Genomics Visium CytAssist spatial transcriptomics and proteomics from total mRNA within original 3D tissue and biomineral structure (bridging histology and genomics), and 10X Genomics Chromium high-throughput or deep single cell RNA-Seq.