Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** project summary:we aim to procure a…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** project summary:we aim to procure a flexible and user-friendly laser microdissection (LMD) system to bolster current food and agricultural research and elevate capabilities in the north texas and southern oklahoma region. The equipment will be housed at the university of north texas. LMD offers proven, versatile technology for precision sample preparation: IT is the gold standard for obtaining well-defined, discrete materials for downstream experiments. In biological, agricultural, and biomedical sciences, isolating specific organs, tissues, or individual cells – with microscopic resolution – facilitates the finest scale of discovery and is particularly important for developmental biology, biochemistry, pathology, and systems biology related -omics technologies. LMD at UNT will help reclaim regional capabilities that were lost with the dissolution of basic sciences at the noble research institute in ardmore, OK. A strength of our proposal is how well LMD will complement and augment existing facilities: UNT's life sciences complex houses state-of-the-art microscopy and histology resources for upstream tissue preparation and is well-equipped for cutting-edge downstream analyses with the UNT genomics center and the bioanalytical facility for metabolomics; coupled with UNT's laboratory for imaging mass spectrometry, LMD will provide a powerful technique to isolate and analyze tissues showing distinctive metabolite signatures. Regional institutions with strengths in food and agricultural research that will benefit from LMD capabilities, as described in this proposal, include UNT and texas woman's university, both hispanic- and minority-serving institutions in denton, TX; texas a & m university agrilife at dallas; and the oklahoma state university institute for agricultural biosciences in ardmore, OK.