Prof. Shashank Shekhar awarded NIH funding for a new advanced microscope to study nano-scaled cellular processes

Prof. Shekhar has been awarded $250,000 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to acquire a state-of-the-art, spinning (iLas) total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscope. This is the first such instrument at Emory and is only the second one in the Southeastern United States, the TIRF microscope is also supported by Emory’s Office of Research Fund Support and the Department of Physics.

The TIRF microscope will enable capturing four-color images of fast, dynamic processes at the scale of individual molecules. It will also allow observation of precise locations of single protein molecules tagged with fluorescence at unprecedented temporal and spatial resolutions. The Shekhar lab will use the new microscope in combination with other biophysical methods including microfluidics-assisted single filament imaging as well as multispectral single molecule imaging approaches which the lab has pioneered to advance the understanding of the role of the actin cytoskeleton in key cellular processes such as cell movement, cell division and cancer metastasis.