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Don:  We are just starting to bootstrap a central facility at our university.
Have you come across your used systems by chance or are there good places to
look?  Thanks for any leads.

John

John Sutko
Department of Pharmacology/318
Univ. Nevada, Reno
Reno, NV 89557

Tel. (775) 784-4121, -4537
Fax (775) 784-1620
email  [log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald O'Malley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 10:35 AM
Subject: Cheap Confocal Recommendation


> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> My recommendation for a cheap confocal
> is to try and find a used MRC 600.  They might
> be had (without microscope) for on the order
> of $25,000 (more or less, depending on the
> motivation of the seller, condition of instrument
> and laser, completeness), but I would coordinate
> with BioRad before hand to make sure they
> will support its attachment to whatever
> microscope you wish to use.   We bought one
> and spent an additional $15,000 for additional
> parts and service to get it up and running, and
> are quite happy with it.  Its optical performance
> matches any $300,000 new instrument from any
> vendor (in terms of optical sectioning).
>     Of course, with any used instrument, it is
> buyer beware.
>
> Advantages of the MRC 600:
>     *line-scanning provides fast, sensitive 1D imaging
>     *continuously variable aperture-- very important
>     *operates at the Rayleigh limit
>         (depending on sample and objective of course)
>     *can do XZ scans-- nice for showing optical
>          sectioning performance-- always ask to see
>          the z-axis point spread function before you buy
>     *excellent service/support from BioRad
>     *easy to do timelapse, z-stacks, max projections
>         and two-channel merged images and has
>         good macro language
>
> BioRad has told me that they if they decided to
> discontinue support of the MRC600 they would
> give us users 5-years notice.  My lab relies heavily
> on two MRC600's, so I do have some vested interest
> in their continued use by the confocal community.
>
> FYI,
> Don
>
> Donald M. O'Malley, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Biology
> 414 Mugar Hall
> Northeastern University
> Boston, MA 02115
> [log in to unmask]
> www.omalleylab.neu.edu
>
> p.s.  If you want to see some examples of our use of
> the MRC 600 see:
>
>     Gahtan E, Sankrithi N, Campos JB and O'Malley DM (2002)
> Evidence for a widespread brainstem escape network in
> larval zebrafish.  J. Neurophys 87:608-614.
>         and
>    Gahtan E  and O'Malley DM (2001) Rapid lesioning of large
> numbers of identified vertebrate neurons: applications
> in zebrafish.  J. Neurosci. Meth. 108:97-110.
>
> I have these available as PDFs.
>