Research Services
The Creighton Integrated Biomedical Imaging Facility has acquired two new High Content Screening (HCS) instruments - a Molecular Devices ImageXpress Micro (IXM) and an ImageXpress Ultra (IXU). These instruments are essentially a hybrid between a high-performance plate reader and a motorized inverted microscope with advanced software analysis capabilities. Instead of reading light levels from a single well, they record multi-color fluorescence images of each well, including three-dimensional image stacks, and analyze them. Both systems can accept a wide variety of standard and custom multi-well plates. Both systems can be used with fixed samples.
The IXM is a widefield fluorescence-based system using an LED light engine and has the micro-fluidics and incubator options that allows the user to perform time lapse imaging of live cells and add compounds at different intervals. The system has filter cubes to handle fluorophores such as DAPI, GFP, Cy3, TRITC and Cy5.
ImageXpress Micro with micro-fluidics and incubation options
The IXU is a confocal based system which can capture confocal images of all the wells in a plate. It does not have the micro fluidics option. the system includes lasers for DAPI, GFP, TRITC, and Cy5.
ImageXpress Ultra
Both systems utilize the MetaXpress software, a version of Molecular Devices' image analysis program MetaMorph with an HCS screening option for both the acquisition of images and the analysis of the images. We also have 3 offline copies for image analysis.
MetaXpress Software interface
Training on these systems will begin soon. If you have any questions, please get in touch with John Billheimer.
The instruments are in Room 382 of Criss III in the Molecular Biology/ Imaging Core Facility.
Link to Molecular Devices High Content Imaging
Below are links to papers using High Content Screening in their research:
A Hierarchical Map of Regulatory Genetic Interactions in Membrane Trafficking
