Friday night – Microscope core

Last night was SO fun ! We had done most of the cleaning last night since we had so much help.. today we did the last bits of getting the furniture back to the neighbors

It was a beautiful day so gabe, nova, diane and I headed to teh 1000 acre dog park.. one of our favorite places.. and definitely one of nova’s too ! It was a beautiful fall day.. the sun was gorgeous.. great views of Mt Hood too

Later that day Gabe’s housemate James took us on a tour of the Microscope Imaging core.. which is a shared resource at the Knight Cancer center at OHSU. James is an amazing scientist.. and is an expert in all sorts of imaging technology as well as cellular anatomy. It was so cool to see all the gear and what James and his colleagues could do with it. THey had so many different types of microscopes.. optical, scanning electron microscopes, confocal microscopy and CryoEM microscopes. I was particularly excited to see the CryoEM technology because I’d done a project with MIT and U MIch on data prep for these incredible machines which can cost up to $5 million each ! THe devices are so sensitive that they’re mounted on a separate piece of flooring separated from the rest of the building which is supported on pylons which go 300 feet into the earth !

CryoEM is used to image molecules and show their physical shape. Every picture you’ve ever seen of the covid virus and it’s ‘spike protein’ were made by CryoEM.. Here’s some pictures thatthese machines have taken of various biological molecules

James is such a great tour guide !..

James spent time showing me the sample grids they use in their cryoem tools. it was a rteeat for me because I have spent so much time looking at Electron micrograph images of these things.. but never seen the real thing !