Carver grant helps Microscopy Center

Sept. 19, 2007

WAVERLY, Iowa --- The Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust granted $157,854 to Wartburg College toward the establishment of Carver Microscopy Center.

Scheduled to open this fall, the center will be located in the Wartburg College Science Center. The grant will allow Wartburg to purchase a Nikon inverted microscope and confocal accessory system, allowing student and faculty operators to see live cells and tissues in three dimensions.

The equipment will serve as the centerpiece of Carver Microscopy Center.

Other plans for the center include: installation of a research fluorescence stereomicroscope; renovations to the existing microscopy suite; and an offline workstation for processing of large data sets generated by the confocal microscope.

Total costs for the center are estimated at more than $230,000. Nearly 500 students per year will use Carver Microscopy Center for course work and summer research.

Dedicated in September 2004, the 111,000 square-foot Science Center doubled facilities devoted to biology, biochemistry, chemistry, engineering science, mathematics, computer science and physics. While doing so, the college committed to ongoing enhancements within the facility. Carver Microscopy Center, when added to the existing scanning electron microscope suite, will provide state-of-the-art opportunities for students and faculty.

The grant was written by Dr. Roy Ventullo, professor of biology and Burk-Will Chair in Biology and director of undergraduate research, and Dr. J. Keith McClung, associate professor of biology and director of Carver Microscopy Center. The project is intended to enhance research and learning opportunities in biology, biochemistry and computer science.

Biology has been Wartburg’s largest major the past several years and has experienced marked growth since the dedication of the Science Center. In fall 2006, 24 percent of first-year students declared biology as their major. Since 2002, the number of biology majors increased 54 percent. The biochemistry program has achieved similar enrollment growth, almost tripling the number of majors in that same time period.

In addition to Ventullo and McClung, several faculty members will utilize Carver Microscopy Center in courses, undergraduate research and personal research. Among those faculty members are:

Dr. Shawn Ellerbroek, assistant professor of chemistry/biochemistry, previously isolated a novel protein (SGEF) that stimulates huge 3-D membrane outgrowths in cultured cells. He and his students require the plane focusing ability of a confocal microscope to study both the dynamics of these outgrowths and the potential association of SGEF at outgrowth tips.

Dr. Johanna Foster, associate professor of biology, is currently working on the effects that mound-building ants have on prairie plants and soils. She has discovered that ant mounds have significant effects on soil organic matter, moisture, plant species distributions and plant cover. She will work in collaboration with Ventullo to study the effect of ant mounds on microbial communities in prairie soils. The confocal and stereoscope are ideal for examining the microbial community structure on soil grains

McClung plans to use both scopes in his research. Confocal microscopy will allow him to track subcellular location of prohibitin in his research related to breast cancer. The majority is located in the mitochondria but a small fraction is located in the nucleus. There are also two mRNAs for prohibitin, one codes for a growth inhibitory properties. Using interference RNA to destroy this RNA, the microscopes will be used to trace the subcellular location and shift in prohibitin domains.

Dr. Johnathan Melville, assistant professor of biology, and his students will use the confocal microscope to look at the 3-dimensional structure of a neuron --- some of the strangest and longest cells in the human body. He is interested in whether new neurons are born in adults after learning new tasks and whether neurons change their shape during learning or exercise. This involves identifying new neurons, looking at their structure and other factors. Melville gained extensive experience with confocal microscopy at Oregon State University, spending nearly 60 hours each week doing his Ph.D. research.

The research interests of Dr. Stephanie Toering-Peters, assistant professor of biology, include the production and release of mating pheromones in fruit flies. Students will be able to use the fluorescent stereomicroscope to determine whether individual larvae are normal or mutant by using strains with fluorescently labeled chromosomes. In addition, she and her students will use the confocal microscope to determine the localization of enzymes used for pheromone production in sections of adult flies.

Ventullo studies the biology of biofilms, and the confocal microscope will directly impact this research. To date, he has used the scanning electron microscope to examine the 3-D structure of fixed dead biofilms in drinking water, stream ecosystems and media otis. The confocal microscope will allow Ventullo and his students to view the development of live biofilms over time in 3-D. That, combined with other techniques allows more specific analysis of community structure in 3-D. Ventullo would use the stereoscope in a collaborative project with Waverly Hospital to examine bacterial colonization of ear tubes during ear infections and methods that might be used to eliminate biofilms.

Dr. John Zelle, professor of computer science, has led a long-running research project with students to develop virtual reality software. Each year, three to four senior projects contribute to this effort. This research would not directly use either of the new microscopes. Instead, Zelle and his students would use data generated primarily by biology students using those microscopes to develop software to manipulate the images.