Microscope bought with businessman’s 
help opens doors for health researchers

A FINANCIAL donation from Yorkshire businessman Michael Beverley has allowed his former university to build a state-of-the-art microscope which is being used to help scientists develop treatments for a range of conditions including heart disease and dementia.
By The Newsroom
Published 17th Apr 2013, 01:01 BST

Leeds University’s SuperResolution Light Microscope is one of just a handful of its kind in the country’s higher education sector.

The microscope is enabling scientists to examine in “previously unimagined detail” the structure and function of human proteins.

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Academics say that understanding these could be key to creating new treatments for a range of diseases and conditions.

Michelle Peckham, Professor of Cell Biology at Leeds University said: “It overcomes traditional limitations on what can be seen with a light microscope by building up our image dot by dot.

“This microscopic ‘pointillism’ allows us to create detailed images of structures smaller than 200 nanometres – which is a 5,000th of a millimetre – across, that would otherwise be too small to image clearly.

“And there are things you can do in a light microscope that you can’t do in an electron microscope. Most importantly, almost all electron microscopes work in a vacuum, so you can’t normally use live cells. If we are using live cells, we need to be looking at them through a light microscope.”

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He said it was already having a big impact on university research. “We’re using it to examine the organisation of muscle proteins. This could help us unlock some of the processes at work in the mutations which cause, for example, heart disease.”

Other research teams working in dementia, heart disease and kidney disease, and examining how viruses replicate, are also making use of this world-class facility.

It has also led directly to Leeds University winning a £1.4m grant from the Medical Research Council to develop a second type of super-resolution microscope and further strengthen its work in this area.

Mr Beverley, who was an economics and politics student at Leeds University, said he was delighted with how his donation has been used by the university to create the SuperResolution Light Microscope. “I’m humbled by all of the work that’s being done and the value that is being derived from the donation.”

Related topics:Yorkshire