Biology Dept. Equipment

Major Equipment
Apart from the equipment located in each of the individual laboratories, the Biology Department has three
shared cored facilities: a cell biology core, a molecular biology core and a controlled environment core.

The Cell Biology Core includes histology equipment, a microtome, a MICROM cryostat, and two microscopes.
A Nikon Ti inverted epifluorescence microscope with motorized stage and a motorized filter turret with four
different filters capable of fluorescence imaging in four channels. It also has phase contrast and DIC, a
CoolSNAP ES2 digital camera and the Nikon Elements Advanced Research image analysis software. A Zeiss
confocal microscope LSM 780 equipped with a digital camera and the Zen software is located in the same dark
room as the Nikon microscope.

The Cell Biology Core also counts with an Attune NxT Flow Cytometer (Applied Biosciences). This is an
acoustic focusing flow cytometer with three lasers, a blue, a violet and a red laser. Two FlowJo licenses are
available for users to analyze their data. The Sony cell sorter is located in the Flow Cytometry Shared Facility
at the Health Sciences Center.

The Molecular Biology Facility has an Illumina NextSeq 500 sequencing, two ABI 3130 DNA sequencers,
Spectrophotometers, Gel Imaging Systems, and two Real-time PCR instruments (an ABI 7000 and a BioRad
CDX96 Touch) and ultracentrifuge. Additionally, Dr. Darrel Dinwiddie has an Illumina MiSeq sequencer where
we routinely perform high throughput sequencing runs. The Facility is run by Dr. Melissa Sanchez and a
graduate student assistant. The staff receives samples from users every morning and can perform all the
sample preparation required for every project.

A single cell 10x Genomics instrument is available for all UNM researchers at the University of New Mexico
Health Sciences Center (Cancer Research Facility) which was co-purchased with Biology.

The Controlled Environment Core includes facilities for rearing snails and selected other invertebrates are
equipped with a water purification system, pressurized air for water aeration, light/dark timer, temperature
control, racks and tanks, dissection microscopes, cold light sources, 20C incubator and refrigerator/freezer.
This facility holds a BSL2 designation for work with trematode parasites. The facility has two environmental
chambers with controlled temperatures and photoperiods, freezer rooms with alarm systems, several cell
culture incubators, a BSL-2 laboratory with a biosafety cabinet, a centrifuge and an inverted fluorescent
microscopy.

Bioinformatics and Advanced Computing facilities
CETI has a Bioinformatics core facility as part of the Molecular Core Facility. A full time staff member, Dr. Lijing Bu (https://ceti.unm.edu/our-members/profile/lijing-bu.html), assists all CETI investigators to perform bioinformatics analyses. Dr. Bu also trains students and postdocs to use the Galaxy platform under which we have all the tools and pipelines installed so that our data analysis flow is streamlined. A second Bioinformatics center is located in PAIS, the Physics and Interdisciplinary science building. This facility is led by Dr. Marijan Posavi, a full-time staff member that supports any investigators at UNM Arts and Sciences. The University of New Mexico Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC, http://www.carc.unm.edu) provides all investigators at UNM Main Campus with high performance computer technologies and storage space free of charge. Resources available include short-term and long-term data storage and six supercomputers for high throughput memory-intensive applications. All these resources will enable the research proposed in this current proposal.

Other Institutional cores and equipment
All the core facilities below located at UNM North Campus are available to all UNM investigators and within 10 minute walk from Main Campus.

• Brain and Behavioral Health Institute (BBHI), a leading center for comprehensive, state-of-the-art research and training in the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic and behavioral health disorders (https://brain.health.unm.edu/).
• Surgical Core: There are two rooms with three bench spaces for surgical manipulations (DOMH 1325/1327), as well as 3 common use gas anesthesia machines, complete with state of-the-art temperature regulation equipment, Isoflurane scavenging F-air canisters, and ventilation machines. In addition, there is a glass-beads sterilizer (Fine Scientific Tools), stereotaxic apparatus (Harvard Apparatus and KOPF) for both mice and rats, and several heating pads (various companies). Finally, there are two Thermocare recovery chambers for survival rodent surgeries. A nearby autoclave makes survival surgeries quite convenient.
• Imaging Core (MRI): Complete with a 7T MRI for small animals, which can image either structural alterations or functional responses of the rodent brain. EPR imager for non-invasive in situ measurements of free radicals and brain tissue oxygenation after stroke, traumatic brain injury, and ischemia etc. A 2-photon laser-scanning microscope (Prairie View Ultima) for intravital imaging. This imaging core is a shared resource facility, which is available to all NRF faculties.
• Cellular/Molecular Core: Provides bench space, a standard assortment of immunohistochemical tools, staining kits, a fluorescent microscope, a cryostat (Leica, CM3050S), and an infrared plate reader (LiCor, Olympus). 
• Rodent Behavioral Core: Located adjacent to the animal facility in the BRaIN is the Rodent Behavioral Facility. This facility has a Morris water maze, a rotarod,Y-maze, zero maze and open field for spatial memory and motor functional analysis.
• Pre-clinical core funded by CoBRE P20 grant: The pre-clinical core at the BRaIN was recently established via CoBRE P20 funding and includes 1) Motion tracking (for open field test, novel object recognition test, Y-maze, zero maze and Morris Water Maze); 2) Rotarod (for motor learning/testing); 3) CatWalk (A sophisticated and high-throughput system to measure gait and motor performance in mice or rats); 4) In vivo electrophysiology, optogenetics and in vivo mini-scopes (to monitor and manipulate neuronal activity while the animals are awake and behaving); 5) CLARITY (an innovative way to optically clear tissue to image large fluorescent 3D brain structures); 6) Imaris 3D and 4D – Image analysis software (for 3D and 4D quantifications of stacked fluorescent images).