NeuroVentures Equipment Grant

Alex Dunn, Chemical Engineering
Miriam Goodman, Molecular & Cellular Physiology

Alex Dunn (Chemical Engineering) and Miriam Goodman (Molecular and Cellular Physiology will receive funding to purchase a Hamamatsu Orca Flash 4.0 camera. This high-speed camera will augment an existing microscope in the Dunn lab and be used to understand the mechanisms of mechanosensitive ion channels. Mechanosensitive ion channels allow cells to sense mechanical stimuli, and are essential to our senses of touch, pain, and proprioception. Dunn and Goodman are developing a novel single-molecule biophysical assay that will allow them, for the first time, to directly probe how mechanical stimuli cause single ion channels to open. The new camera will capture signal from the opening ion channels at speeds of 3000 frames per second.