Mission Statement
The mission of NCMIR is to develop technologies to bridge understanding of biological systems between the gross anatomical and molecular scales and to make these technologies broadly available to biomedical researchers. NCMIR provides expertise, infrastructure, technological development, and an environment in which new information about the 3D ultrastructure of tissues, cells, and macromolecular complexes may be accurately and easily obtained and analyzed.
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Research Highlights
NCMIR Researchers Help Create a Powerful New Probe for Light and Electron Microscopy
In the April 5th issue of PLoS Biology, NCMIR scientists, in a collaboration with a team led by Nobel laureate Roger Tsien, introduced a new fluorescent probe for correlated light and electron microscopy that overcomes many of the limitations previously encountered by researchers seeking to image cells and tissues at high resolution. Read More >>
UC San Diego's National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) Instrumental in Huntington's Disease Breakthrough
Imagine being able to prevent certain death of nerve cells in the brain and visualizing the feat with the latest in electron microscope technology. That's just what a team of biomedical researchers did, including UC San Diego's own National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), giving hope to Huntington's disease patients. Huntington’s disease is an inherited and incurable neurodegenerative disorder affecting 35,000 people annually and is caused by mutation of the gene encoding the huntingtin protein. Read More >>
New Research Reveals Unexpected Biological Pathway In Glaucoma
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers from the Kennedy Krieger Institute and four collaborating institutions, including the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, identified a new and unexpected biological pathway that appears to contribute to the development of glaucoma and its resulting vision loss. Read More >>
Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy at the 2010 Microscopy and Microanalysis Meeting
At the 2010 Microscopy and Microanalysis meeting in Portland, Oregon, NCMIR scientists presented their work "Enhancing Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy to Enable High Resolution 3-D Nanohistology of Cells and Tissues," a collaboration with researchers Roger Tsien's laboratory at UCSD. Read More >>
NCMIR Scientists Provide the First Glimpse of Synthetic Life
Pioneering geneticist J. Craig Venter and colleagues announced the creation of the first synthetic life form, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 at a press conference in Washington, D.C. and NCMIR researchers were entrusted with obtaining the first images of this new organism. Read More >>
Sestrin Protects Fruit Flies From Age-Related Pathologies; NCMIR Image Featured on Cover of Science
NCMIR scientists were members of a team of researchers that studied the intricate link of TOR with sestrins, a family of highly conserved proteins whose expression is induced by stress. Read More >>
NCMIR’s Electron Tomography Resource Reveals Novel Mitochondrial Anchoring Scaffolds and Cristae Structured for High-rate Metabolism
Electron microscope tomography was used at the NCMIR to aid Prof. George Spirou (West Virginia University) in his investigation of the mitochondria-associated adherens complex (MAC) in the auditory brain stem and resulted in a publication in the J. Neuroscience. Read More >>
Direct Restriction of Virus Release and Incorporation of the Interferon-Induced Protein BST-2 into HIV-1 Particles
In their paper, "Direct Restriction of Virus Release and Incorporation of the Interferon-Induced Protein BST-2 into HIV-1 Particles" published in PloS Pathogens, NMCIR researchers, in collaboration with Kathleen Fitzpatrick and John Guatelli of the UCSD School of Medicine show that the cellular protein BST-2 is involved in retaining newly formed HIV-1 virions on the surface of cells. Read More >>
In The News
Two Top Biological Imaging Centers Offer Powerful Free Online Tool to Researchers, Educators, and Public
ASCB’s The Cell: An Image Library and NCMIR’s Cell Centered Database introduce new interface to spur health discoveries and science education
BETHESDA, MD, USA, DECEMBER 1, 2011 – The collaboration of two leading cell image resource centers now provides a more extensive and advanced facility for archiving, sharing, and analyzing microscope images in great detail. The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have joined forces to provide a unified interface. This union extends ASCB’s The Cell: An Image Library website with new capabilities and an extensible software infrastructure. Read More >>
Waitt Family Foundation Project Develops Whole Brain Catalog
At the year’s biggest international meeting of neuroscientists, researchers from the University of California, San Diego will unveil a tool that could revolutionize the way scientists and students explore and map the mysteries of the brain. Read More >>
2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Shared by UC San Diego and NCMIR Researcher Roger Tsien
University of California, San Diego Professor Roger Tsien, Ph.D., will share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Boston University School of Medicine, and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York. Read More >>
