National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression National Institutes of Health

NCI Core Fluorescence
Imaging Facility

Policies

General Usage Policies

Principal investigators should read this document, and sign it PI's should also supply a short written summary of the proposed experiment. After the first 16 hours of usage, PI's should arrange a progress report meeting with Imaging Facility staff. After completion of the project, PI's are required to supply a short written statement summarizing results of the imaging project, and outlining plans for future presentations and publications of the image data. If the project changes, PI's should provide a new or revised summary. It is vital for the Facility to maintain an up-to-date record of its research contributions for budget justifications and site visits.

Users will be trained on the instrument of choice. Given current staffing, all users must learn over a period of several training sessions to become relatively independent.

Users will be given a set of guidelines for facility and instrument usage that is designed to maintain instrument quality and to be fair to other users. These rules must be strictly adhered to, or privileges to use the facility will be revoked.

Due to high demand on these instruments, preliminary screening of fluorescence staining should be done elsewhere on conventional fluorescence microscopes. Facility time should be reserved only for imaging needs that cannot be accomplished on standard instruments.

Users are expected to be familiar with basic immunostaining and fixation techniques and slide preparation.

Acknowledgments to the Facility

For record keeping of the facility's research contribution, users are requested to notify the director when images collected in the facility are published, or used in presentations at meetings, site visits, etc., and to supply reprints.

The facility, including Drs. McNally and Karpova, should be acknowledged on slides prepared from facility data. Manuscripts that include data from the facility should acknowledge the DBS, LRBGE Fluorescence Imaging Facility, and Drs. McNally and Karpova.

Interactions that involve more than basic instruction on how to operate the microscopes should lead to co-authorship on papers, by mutual agreement of all parties.

Information about the users of the facility:

Please fill out the form below and sign to indicate that you have read the policy statement. Return the form to Dr. Karpova or Dr. McNally.
The form can also be downloaded as a pdf file.