Application deadline

Registration deadline for PhD students and students at the Medical Student Research Program at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway: December 15

Application deadline for other applicants: December 1st. Application code 9303 in Søknadsweb.

Type of course

PhD course. This course is available as a singular course.

The course is intended for PhD students who want to learn more about the modern use of electron microscopy and CLEM as research tools in medicine and biology.

The course is organized by the Department of Medical Biology and the Digital Life Norway Research School (DLN).

Travel grants: The Digital Life Norway Research School provides travel grants for all participating PhD-students from other Norwegian universities who are registered at the research school. The grant covers travel expenses to and from Tromsø, and housing in Tromsø during the course. See this page for more information: https://www.digitallifenorway.org/dlnrs

Admission requirements

PhD students, master students at a Medical Student Research Program or holders of a Norwegian master´s degree of five years or 3+ 2 years (or equivalent) may be admitted. Valid documentation is a statement from your institution that you are a registered PhD student or master student in a Medical Student Research Program, or a Master´s Diploma with Diploma Supplement / English translation of the diploma. PhD students are exempt from semester fee.

For more information regarding PhD courses at the Faculty of Health Sciences go to: http://uit.no/helsefak/forskning/phd/emner

The course has a capacity of 12 students.

If there are more applicants than available spaces in the course, students will be given priority from category 1 to 5.

• PhD students, research fellows and students participating in the medical student research programme at the UiT - The Arctic University of Tromsø
• PhD students from Norwegian universities outside of Tromsø who are registered at the DLN research school.
• Participants in the Associate Professor Programme
• PhD students and students at the medical student research programme at other universities
• People who have minimum a Master's degree or equivalent, but have not been admitted to a PhD programme.

Course content

The course will offer theoretical and practical training in state of the art techniques in correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM). The teaching will be given as lectures, demonstrations, and practical sessions. Students are invited to work with own research material - within limitations. The following topics will be included:

• CLEM in medical and biological research - applications, instrumentation, sampling, probes
• Methods for detection/fine localization of proteins (on section, pre embedding, and by use of in vivo expressed tags)
• How to find the needle in the haystack - techniques to add landmarks on cells and bulk specimen
• Sample preparations for CLEM - 1) the Tokuyasu technique; 2) high pressure freezing/freeze substitution, 3) microwave processing, 4) preparations of samples for scanning EM/CLEM
• Ultramicrotomy of resin-embedded and frozen specimens
• Immunolabeling of sections for light and electron microscopy , and special techniques for CLEM on cells and bulk specimen
• Flat embedding techniques and preparation of culture substrates for CLEM
• Transmission electron microscopy
• Scanning electron microscopy
• Confocal microscopy
• Image analysis

Objectives of the course

Knowledge: Upon completion of this course the participants will be able to understand and explain relevant modern methods and techniques using CLEM as a research tool. This includes methods for pre-treatment, fixation, and preparation of cells and tissues for CLEM, the theoretical basis for transmission and scanning EM and confocal microscopy, and relevant methods for image analysis.

Skills: The students will obtain practical skills in different CLEM techniques, including:

• methods for pre-treatment, fixation, and preparation of samples for CLEM
• practical use of instruments
• image analysis

Competence: Basic competence to conduct experiments using CLEM as a method.

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods

Assessment

Course Work Requirements

Attendance at the course, including lectures, demonstrations and laboratory exercises

Examination and assessment

Home examination, graded pass or fail. The examination can be answered in Norwegian (or in another Scandinavian language) or English.

There will be the option of one supplementary examination if a fail grade is achieved at the first attempt. Registration deadline for the re-sit exam is August 15th.

Recommended reading/syllabus