What role does the brain play in hearing? How do migratory birds navigate? And where is the magnetic sense of salmon located? The new "digitising microscopy robot" will help Oldenburg scientists in their search for answers in future.
Biological and medical research at the University of Oldenburg now has a new type of microscope at its disposal, a so-called "digitising microscope robot". The device, worth around 200,000 euros, is only in use at a few universities in Germany.
At the University of Oldenburg, it is part of the so-called "Core Facility Microscopy", a kind of equipment pool for cutting-edge research that the School V - School of Mathematics and Science is gradually building up together with the School VI - School of Medicine and Health Sciences. What makes it special: The new device captures, visualises and documents wafer-thin tissue sections completely automatically. It works significantly faster and more accurately than a human being. "What used to take a month, this device can do in one night, and in a quality that we were previously unable to achieve," explains neurobiologist Prof Dr Henrik Mouritsen, one of the main users of the device. Another advantage is that the samples are also archived digitally. This means that they can be used again years later - without any loss of quality.
Mouritsen and his team are using the device to investigate how migratory birds use their sense of magnetism and other sensory impressions for orientation. The microscope is also regularly used by researchers from Prof Dr Michael Winklhofer's Sensory Biology of Animals working group - they want to find out more about the magnetic sense of salmon. The team of neurogeneticist Prof Dr Hans Gerd Nothwang is researching the effects of deafness on the development and function of the auditory pathway in mice. His research also benefits from the speed and quality of this device when analysing anatomical and morphological changes, i.e. deviations in the structure or form of organisms.
In general, the microscopy robot is available to all scientists at the university, including for research projects in human medicine. There, the device is of enormous importance for strengthening and further developing medical research and for collaboration between clinical and natural science professors. The device is also used as part of the scientific training of medical students to familiarise them with the latest techniques.