UNLIMITED -OMICS APPLICATIONS THROUGH HIGH-RESOLUTION, SUB-CELLULAR PRECISION SAMPLE ISOLATION AND IMAGING

North Carolina State University (NCSU) is the flagship, land-grant institution of the state with an enrollment of 36,000+ students. The researchers and programs in the areas of forestry, agricultural, food, and plant sciences are housed within the College of Natural Resources (CNR), College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), and College of Engineering (CoE). These three globally integrated research colleges consist of 16 departments and serve a combined student body of nearly 15,000+ individuals. The faculty, staff, research scientists, graduate students, and undergraduates in these colleges carry out research on a daily basis that addresses the challenges that form the core mission statement of the USDA and utilize, develop, and enhance 'fact-based, data-driven, and customer-focused decisions' that improve the livelihoods of all North Carolinians. Additionally, NCSU researchers provide leadership to local, state, national and international constituents in the areas of 'agriculture, food, natural resources, rural infrastructure, nutrition, and related issues' by executing the three central foundations of land-grant institutions - research, teaching, and extension activities. To continue to provide the highest quality guidance, NCSU researchers require access to state of the art, cutting- edge technologies. To facilitate these efforts, we are looking to acquire a shared-use, well- integrated piece of equipment, a Leica Laser Microdissection (LMD) 7 microscope system. This system enables precision biological sample preparation for a broad range of downstream experimental applications. The most exciting applications include precision analyses in the field of systems biology, synthetic biology, and multi-omics analyses (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics). The Leica LMD7 system allows for direct isolation of phenotypically defined cell populations or individual cells from complex biological tissue sections or cytology slides. The collaborating PD and co-PDs represent a potent combination of scientists with expertise in the area of integration between microscopy and -omics related approaches. The PD and co-PDs have a diverse background in disciplines that include entomology, forestry, plant pathology, molecular and cellular biology, tissue culture, CRISPR, microbiology, and medical biology. Through our partnership, we are excited to provide the research and extension faculty, students, and staff easy access to the Lecia LMD7 system by housing it in a world-class interdisciplinary research facility on the NCSU campus within a core-facility dedicated to state- of-the-art microscopy-based research applications.