Facilities

Facilities

The Department has state-of-the-art labs and world-class research facilities. Our studies are carried out in custom-designed laboratories with high calibre technical staff and an excellent research equipment base.

Current facilities and major items of instrumentation include:

  • Cell culture labs for bacterial, insect and mammalian cell propagation (cell culture hoods, CO2 incubators, centrifuges, inverted microscopes, integra cellspin platform)
  • Cold rooms and dark room (with automated film development capability)
  • Automated liquid handling (Perkin-Elmer nano-litre Janus system)
  • Sample preparation and storage (centrifuges, ultra-centrifuges, cell disruptor, bioruptor, vacuum concentrators, lyophilizer, -80oC freezers, -150oC freezer, vacuum oven, Leica cryostat, CASY cell counter etc.)
  • DNA analysis (qPCR, pyrosequencer, nanodrop system etc.)
  • Gene profiling (Affymetrix GeneChip system, Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100)
  • Protein purification (ÄKTA chromatography)
  • Proteomics facility (nano-LC systems, LTQ-Orbitrap ‘Elite’ and TSQ Vantage mass spectrometers; speed-vac and Offgel systems)
  • X-ray crystallography (Mosquito lipidic cubic phase screening crystallization robot, cooled crystallization incubators etc.)
  • Imaging (Nikon confocal microscope with spectral detector; Nikon inverted fluorescence microscope and upright fluorescence microscope Qimaging digital camera, LiCor odyssey infrared imager, Biorad Gel Doc XR+ etc.)
  • Drosophila genetics facility
  • Bioinformatics facility
  • BL2 laboratory
  • Electrophysiology (oocyte two-electrode voltage clamp workstation, neurology DC recording system)
  • HTS, FRET, luminescence, fluorescence assays (Pherastar system with nano-BRET module, Varioskan LUX microplate reader).