Integrated Microscopy and Proteomics (IMP)

This resource will enable Australian researchers to understand the precise molecular makeup of the intracellular environment.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) bioinformatics approaches will be used to seamlessly integrate and interrogate high-resolution imaging data (derived from optical and electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography) with proteomic/genomic data and gene ontology/protein interaction network data.

The Integrated Microscopy and Proteomics project will enable a new, publicly accessible, national-scale data asset to underpin the integration of molecular imaging with bio-analytics, driving discovery research across the whole of the life sciences.

This online platform will host the final, released and annotated datasets and permit presentation of the data to the community.

This work will have immediate application in fields such as drug discovery, infectious diseases and molecular diagnostics.

Co-investment partners

EMBL Australia

Microscopy Australia

Bioplatforms Australia

Monash University

Lead node

1 Collection of proteomic and imaging data

Collect the comprehensive protein and electron microscopy (EM) data currently distributed across numerous disparate community and facility databases, precluding the ready interpretation and analysis of imaging data

2 Integration of molecular imaging and bio-analytics

Apply published approaches - including artificial intelligence tools - to process, segment and label EM tomograms and populate with the appropriate metadata.

3 Make tailored data asset publicly available

The three major outputs of the project will be: a robust resource for multimodal imaging data storage and visualisation; a robust resource to integrate and visualise omics data with multimodal imaging; and a curated, labelled and FAIR public, web-based repository of data.

Core features

Research transformation

Provide an integrated public resource and analytical capability for life science researchers to elucidate molecular mechanisms and characterise cellular events.

Workflows to drive technology development

The resource will underpin exciting new functionality in the context of imaging (EM and optical microscopy) and mass spectrometry instrumentation, driving widespread adoption of the approach throughout the life sciences.

Industry and societal applications

Industry will be able to use in situ approaches to identify protein targets of fluorescently marked therapeutics and develop new functionalities that relate to electron and optical microscopes and mass spectrometers, impacting health and agribusiness.

Who is this project for?

Researchers
Research organisations
Industry – biotechnology and imaging and analytics instrumentation industry

What does this project enable?

This project will enable a comprehensive interpretation of cellular cryo-EM data while providing a visual context for cellular analytics. It will further create a comprehensive collection of imaging and analytics data from a variety of biological samples. With a large enough pool of datasets, it will be possible to analyse the correlation of imaging and analytics across different samples and understand biological processes beyond the point provided by individual studies.