SERVICES

The Molecular Devices IX-Micro high throughput microscope

The Molecular Devices IX-Micro high throughput microscope provides automated widefield imaging of live, fluorescent protein-labeled cells or fixed, stained cells in 96-well or 384-well format. Plate read times vary with number of fields collected per well, number of fluorescent channels collected per field and the image capture time per field but, as a rough estimate, a 384-well plate is collected in 18 minutes for one field/well and one fluorescent channel captured for 150 ms. The automated microscope also contains a fluidics handling capability which can allow the automated generation of time course data collection on living cells in follow-up studies.

Equally important is the data handling components of the system with includes MetaXpress4 to operate the microscope, a file server to store and collate images, three offline workstations for analysis of the data as it is collected, a data server into which that analytical data is stored and AcuityXpress4 software which organizes the image and analytical data and conducts comparative analyses to rapidly identify hits from the thousands of wells collected.

Currently available objectives on the system are: 60x air (Plan-Fluor, 0.85 NA), 40x air (Plan-Apo, 0.95 NA), 40x long-working distance air (Plan-Fluor, 0.60 NA), 20x air (S Fluor, 0.75 NA), 20x long-working distance air (Plan-Fluor, 0.45 NA), 10x air (S Fluor, 0.60 NA), 4x air (Plan-Apo, 0.20 NA). Filter sets are available for a wide variety of fluorophores ranging from DAPI to Alexa 647. Up to four different channels can be cleanly distinguished. The IX Micro high throughput microscope is currently is located in HSE-1690.

Click here for the IXMicro operations manual