8:26 a.m., Jan. 7, 2009----Kirk Czymmek, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Delaware, and associate scientist Elizabeth Adams, researchers in the Bio-Imaging Center at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, have won a grant for a new technology add-on to the facility's BioScope II.

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The BioScope is a Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM) that creates three-dimensional pictures of surfaces, allowing scientists to examine topography, phase, and force interactions in samples.

“The microscope add-on is literally an electronic module, with incredibly powerful capabilities,” said Adams, who also has a secondary appointment as assistant professor in the University of Delaware's Department of Biological Sciences.

This new component, Adams explained, serves a highly specific purpose -- in technical terms, it measures elasticity. “If you change something about your sample, does elasticity change?”

One factor in elasticity is determined by the strength of neighboring molecules and their precise arrangement on any surface, whether natural or synthetic. “To appreciate this in real-world terms, it is like the difference in the sensation you get when walking on the grass versus pavement, but at an atomic level,” said Adams.

“The acquisition of this new technology is a major accomplishment for the University of Delaware and its partners,” added Czymmek, director of the Bio-Imaging Center. “The new capability will extend to a broad array of materials and biological applications. What I am particularly excited about is its ability to map molecular interactions of cell surfaces over 1,000 times faster than current technologies. We plan to work very closely with the developers, Veeco Labs, to expand the application of this technology into new frontiers of biological analysis.”

Officially called the HarmoniX Nanoscale Material Mapping upgrade module, the enhancement is the first atomic force microscope (AFM) to map, on the nanoscale, different materials' properties, such as adhesion, stiffness and average force.

HarmoniX is unique because its property maps are both real-time and high-resolution. It allows scientists to characterize soft materials, thin films, small particles, or domains within a bulk solid.

Veeco Labs, creators of HarmoniX, established the HarmoniX Innovation Research Grant Program in 2008, which provides winners with the hardware, software, training and installation of the HarmoniX module, a $25,000 value.

Scientists who run scanning probe microscopes were encouraged to submit their ideas for 12-month research projects using the module. Adams said that many of the proposals were in the field of materials development; UD's submission was one of the few with life science applications.

Czymmek and Adams plan to investigate fungal cell walls, which have become attractive targets for antifungal chemotherapy. They will use their new module to investigate the effects of antifungal drugs on fungal cell wall elasticity.

The researchers said they expect the data will make an important contribution to the plant and medical fields as a tool for evaluating the effects of some anti-fungal drugs.

The Bio-Imaging Center is a multi-user microscopy facility with state-of-the-art electron, confocal and light microscopes.

Article by Katie Ginder-Vogel