The Armstrong Fund for Science has announced its awards for 2017, which will grant $30,000 each to two projects over the next two years to encourage transformative research on campus that introduces new ways of thinking about pressing scientific or technical challenges.
Joseph Bergan, assistant professor in psychological and brain sciences, will receive $20,000 the first year and $10,000 the second year to support his project, “Molecular profiling of intact biological tissues through accelerated antibody staining.” He hopes to develop a new strategy for preparing tissue samples with antibodies for microscopy so individual proteins and biomolecules can be studied by microscopy “where they reside,” without the need for thin sectioning and time-consuming antibody staining. “Through a series of recent advances in tissue histology and microscopy it is now possible to render large intact tissue samples transparent while preserving the architecture of biomolecules. Thus, fine structures can be precisely imaged deep inside tissue samples without the need for sectioned tissue,” he notes.