Inaugural Symposium of the UniPV PASS-BioMed facilities
(Piattaforme Avanzate per la Strumentazione Scientifica di Area Bio-Medica)

200kV Cryo-Transmission Electron (Cryo-TEM) Microscope
The Thermo Scientific Glacios Cryo-TEM allows scientists to directly determine high-resolution structures of biological assemblies (proteins, protein complexes, nucleic acids) in vitrified aqueous solutions. Single-particle analysis (SPA) in cryo-electron microscopy represents the current forefront of near-atomic structural determination, thanks to recent impressive advances in the direct electron detector technology and computational processing. The instrument is equipped with a 200 kV X-FEG electron source and a Falcon 3EC direct electron detector.

120kV Transmission Electron Microscope
The repositioning and refurbishing of the existing JEM-1200EX II Transmission Electron Microscope (JEOL) allows to perform observations of biological specimens by standard electron microscopy with a 120 kV electron source; furthermore, it provides scientists with the crucial opportunity to screen by a negative staining approach those samples that are candidate for structural determination by cryo-EM.

High Resolution QTOF mass spectrometer
AB Sciex X500B is a benchtop High Resolution QTOF mass spectrometer specifically focused on biological application. High resolution and sensitivity make it suitable for intact proteins study, subunit analysis and peptide mapping. Untargeted MS/MS data and easy data processing allow to carry out studies of metabolomics.

700MHz NMR spectrometer equipped with cryo-probe
The 700MHz BrukerAvance Neo spectrometer has several applications in the chemistry, pharmacology, structural biology and medical fields. It is an essential instrument for the investigation of protein structures and dynamics in solution, including folding and misfolding of proteins such as natively unfolded proteins or destabilised pathogenic variants associated with human diseases. The addition of a cryo-probe dramatically increases the sensitivity on the 1H channel by 5-6 times compared to a standard setup, allowing the investigation of large molecular weight proteins/protein complexes. Drug discovery (including drug screening and investigation of the mechanism of action of new drugs), metabolomics, structural characterisation of nucleic acids and investigation of protein interactors are all further applications of this high-resolution spectrometer.

EOS HPC cluster
EOS is a multi-purpose HPC cluster with hybrid CPU and GPU nodes, 160 TB parallel storage and a total of 672 Intel CPU computational cores, divided into: 7 FAT nodes (each with 32 cores and 768 GB RAM), 7 GPU nodes (each with 32 cores and 128 GB RAM and 2 GPU Nvidia V100 with 32GB RAM), 7 CPU nodes (each with 32 cores and 128 GB RAM). The nodes are connected by an Infiniband network and and Linux operating system. The EOS cluster runs the main software packages for scientific applications.

Digital Light Sheet (DLS) Microscope
The Leica TCS SP8 DLS is an innovative concept to integrate the Light Sheet Microscopy technology into the confocal microscope. This technique is minimally invasive, strongly reduced photo-bleaching and photodamage and has a high acquisition speed. The low phototoxicity allows very long observation times of sensitive samples, the high imaging speed allow fast volumetric imaging and imaging of fast processes. This technique is useful in small organisms developmental biology, mostly in embryos and larvae, cleared organs and spheroid. Fast imaging becomes particularly important in dynamic processes such as cell motion, tracking of vesicles, cell lineage and differentiation.

Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) Microscope
The Leica TCS SP8 STED (Stimulated emission depletion) microscope is a super-resolution microscopy technique which reducing the area of effective excitation, in combination with a scanning microscope breaking the diffraction limit becomes possible. This cell imaging technique is suitable to resolve biomolecular structures such as DNA and DNA-protein complexes, cytoskeleton microtubules, neurofilaments, organelles, such as the endoplasmic reticulum, lysosome, endocytic and exocytic vesicles and mitochondria. Many plasma membrane proteins or membrane associated protein complexes have also been studied by super-resolution fluorescence microscopy.

Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) Microscope
The Leica DMi8 S TIRF (total internal reflection fluorescence) microscope uses a technique for selectively imaging fluorescent molecules in an aqueous environment only in one plane in the sample of 100-200 nm thickness. This technique is mainly used on in vivo sample to qualitatively and quantitatively describe the roles different proteins play in exocytosis/endocytosis, to observe the size, of the contact region between a cell and the solid substrate, for tracking cell movements or protein movements inside the cell.

BD FACS Lyric flow cytometer
The BD FACS Lyric flow cytometer is a combination of all cytometers features like simplicity, speed and automation to ease workflow. The BD FACSLyric is a diagnostic standard for clinical cell analysis and also suitable for research activity. Our instrument represents the full configuration of the system: equipped with 3 excitation lasers (405, 488 and 642 nm), it acquires up to 12 fluorescence channels, to a the maximum acquisition rate of 35.000 events per second with no limit on the number of events acquired. The sensitivity of the BD FACS Lyric is 85 MESF for FITC and 20 MESF for PE. Our system is additionally equipped with 30 or 40 tube autoloader and the fluidics design enables a large selection of sample input devices.

BD FACS Aria III sorter
The BD FACS Aria III sorter is based on a patented technology and allow cell sorting technology to a wide range of applications in research. The BD FACSAria III delivers proven multicolor performance. Its fluidics and optical systems include innovations like the laser excitation optics, the patented flow cell with gel-coupled cuvette and the patented octagon and trigon modules. The sensitivity of the BD FACS Aria III is 85 MESF for FITC and 29 MESF for PE. The maximum sample acquisition rate is 70.000 events per second. Our system is equipped with 5 laser: wavelength choices include 488, 633, 405, 561 and 355 nm lasers. Mount up to 20 detectors and measure a maximum of 18 colors simultaneously.

ImageStream X MarkII Imaging flow cytometer (Amnis)
ImageStream X MarkII combines features of standard flow cytometry and microscopy, performing fast and quantitative analysis of cells thanks to the sensitivity of a FACS and the spatial resolution of a microscope. The instrument acquires brightfield and fluorescent images of cells at high speed, while the proprietary IDEAS software allows quantitative analysis of cellular images and population statistics. The software allows to analyze several biological processes like translocation, co-localization, cell cycle, apoptosis, autophagy, vesicles internalization and other cellular features. Our system is equipped with 488 nm and 642 nm excitation lasers, one TDI CCD camera to acquire up to 6 images of each cell in flow, up to 300 cells per second (brightfield, darkfield and 4 fluorescence images) and three objectives for 20x, 40x and 60x magnification.

High Resolution In-Vivo X-Ray Microtomograph (MicroCT)
The Bruker SkyScan 1276 is a non-invasive high-resolution, fast, in vivo, desktop X-Ray Microtomograph (microCT) able to provide 3D reconstructions of the internal structure of a sample with spatial resolution down to 2.8 µm pixel size. The MicroCT is the technique of choice to study bone micro-structures and it allows to analyze with contrast agents various soft tissues such as, but not limited to, lung, cardiovascular system, cartilage. The instrument can also be used for the structural study of biomaterials and biopolymers.

7T Magnetic Resonance Imaging Tomograph (MRI)
The Bruker PharmaScan 70/16 US MRI allows to obtain in vivo a wide range of images and morphological, metabolic and functional information concerning the nervous system, internal organs and tissues. The use of the technique is crucial for non-invasive studies of tumours, edemas, lesions, for cardiological studies (Cardio MRI) as well as for studies related to the connectivity and the functions of the activated areas in the nervous system (Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Functional Imaging fMRI). With the MRI tomograph it is also possible to conduct magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) studies which allow to simultaneously and accurately quantify the concentrations of different metabolites which undergo substantial changes in the presence of pathologies such as, for example, neurodegenerative ones and tumours.