School of Medicine

Department of Ophthalmology

Research Facilities

Cellular and Molecular Biology Facility

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This shared resource is an inclusive facility providing expertise and resources such as tissue culture cell lines, bacteria, plasmids, viruses, and other biologicals that are maintained at the appropriate storage temperatures (usually in liquid nitrogen or in ultra-low temperature freezers with CO2 back-up), which participating investigators may draw upon as needed. An experienced technician maintains the facility and the equipment is housed such that the participating investigators can access these facilities at any time.

This resource primarily occupies two laboratories, consisting of one space 1,200 square feet and an additional laboratory of 300 square feet. Tissue culture facilities include laminar flow hoods, ultra-low temperature freezers, tissue culture incubators, and an inverted tissue culture microscope. Other rooms contain thermal cyclers, bacteriological incubators, shaking stirrers, facilities for labeling probes to be used in Southern and Northern hybridization techniques, hybridization ovens, and a complete radioisotope laboratory. In addition, the research laboratories of the participating investigators house numerous items of equipment that are shared among participating investigators, co-investigators, postdoctoral fellows, their predoctoral students, and their research associates.

Additional equipment used for cell and tissue culture studies, virological and bacteriological analyses, and a variety of molecular biological investigations and methods includes tissue culture laminar flow hoods, incubators, inverted tissue culture microscopes, real-time polymerase chain reaction instrumentation, instrumentation for detecting radioactivity, several research microscopes, in addition to numerous smaller items of equipment such as shaking water baths, pH meters, stirrers, and thermal cyclers.