Guidelines

Registration procedure

You can download and follow a checklist for light microscopy or electron microscopy to gain access to our services. In brief the following procedure is recommanded:

Get in contact with a MCF personnel either by e-mail (mcf_at_ukbonn.de) or by phone.
Register (available from the intranet) for the general digital services, e.g. booking system, storage, etc.
Fill in the project description form (for light microscopy, for electron microscopy) and send it to us.
Make an appointment where we discuss the overall goals of your work and how to customize your experiments.
Fill in the MCF-specific registration form (english, deutsch) and send it to us.
[optional for EM] The PI needs to fill in the EM-specific agreement and send it to us.
When you have prepared your test samples according to the recommendations made during the initial meeting with the core facility, we will introduce you to the instruments making a basic acquisition setup with your samples.
If you want to use the instrument unassisted, a training (1 – 3 hours) is mandatory. Afterwards, you are allowed to make bookings for the instrument.
With the first data, we then will show you the possibilities of data analysis located at the core facility, thereby discussing any future recommendations for your experiments.

Assisted use

The users should contact the scientific adviser to schedule an appointment on the instrument when both parties are available.

Training for unassisted use

To use instruments of the MCF on your own (only light microscopes), each user must undergo training by the scientific adviser of the facility for each microscope system s/he would like to use.

We highly advise users to ask for microscope training, as this will help to educate the user about how the microscope works and how to best design their experiments for microscopy imaging. General microscopy training lectures for small groups are planned for the near future and will be scheduled for twice a year if demand is met.

Booking

For booking of the MCF instruments, please use the online booking system.

Booking times: on weekdays 8:00 – 18:00. However, overnight experiments or experiments extending into the weekend days can be scheduled after discussion with the MCF personnel.

Consultation

The scientific adviser is available to discuss projects and imaging needs, and to help troubleshoot sample preparation. Discussing various issues with imaging instruments in your own lab is also possible.

Data retention policy

Users should transfer their data to their own storage devices as fast as possible after acquisition. We do not take any responsibility for your data. Ultimately, the users are responsible for their own data and they should set up their own system for data storage that is compatible with general data retention rules.

Network access to data storage devices in the research network is provided for registered users. We do not support direct network transfers to the clinics network.

Publications

Please, consider the following information regarding “Authorships” and “Acknowledgements” and send us a notification if an experiment performed on facility instrument is published in a scientific journal.

Authorships

The core facility personnel may have contributed significantly to your research project (e.g. conception of experimental design, full sample preparation and service imaging, experimental optimization, scientific and technical project discussions, etc.). Authorship may also be appropriate according to good scientific practice. Payment for our services does not argue against an authorship, as the finacial charge can be consider for the temporary employment of personell and the purchase of consumables. Both would also apply for internal group members. More information can be found at https://btc.uni-bonn.de/dfg/ and at https://wissenschaftliche-integritaet.de/en/code-of-conduct/authorship/.

Acknowledgements:

The DFG requires you to mention any use of the Core Facility as an acknowledgment in publications. In accordance with the DFG recommendations we ask you to use the following phrase in the acknowledgment section and provide the project number for all microscopes that you have used for that particular publication (you can find the project numbers in the table below):

“We would like to thank the Microscopy Core Facility of the Medical Faculty at the University of Bonn for providing support and instrumentation funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project number xxxxxxxxx”

Microscope type	Microscope name	DFG project number
Wide-field microscope	Zeiss Observer.Z1	13123509
Slide Scanner	Zeiss Axio Scan.Z1	388168919
High-content screening microscope	Zeiss CellDiscoverer 7	388158066
Confocal microscope	Leica SP5 AOBS with SMD	169331223
Confocal microscope	Leica SP8 AOTF	266686698
Spinning Disk Microscope	VisiScope CSU-W1 with VS-Homogenizer	388169927
Confocal microscope	Leica SP8 AOBS super-resolution	388159768
Scanning electron microscope	Zeiss Crossbeam 550	388171357