Biological Characterization
Biological Characterization
Four (4) Baker SterilGARD II Biosafety cabinets – Laminar flow hoods are available for tissue culture and handling to ensure optimal sterility in all cultures and are equipped with gas and vacuum lines. These hoods are BSL 2 certified.
Thermocycler and Roche Lightcycler 480 – This instrument is used for quantitative PCR analysis.
Cell culture incubators – Three incubators with temperature, CO2 and humidity controls are for standard cell- and tissue-culturing. One cell culture incubator is adapted to accommodate bioreactor set-up.
Temperature/ humidity stability chamber – The stability chamber has controlled temperature and humidity environments for use in shelf life testing of polymers, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical products and packaging.
Refrigerated tabletop centrifuge – This centrifuge is used for cell and sample preparation under refrigerated condition.
TECAN Spark plate reader – TECAN Spark plate reader measures the fluorescence or the absorbance of samples in 24-well, 48-well and 96-well formats. This is commonly used for assays including alamar blue and pico green.
Nexcelom Bioscience Cellometer Auto T4 – Cellometer is used to count cell numbers automatically
Power Wave Absorbance Plate Reader (Bio-Tech Instruments) – The Power Wave Absorbance Plate Reader (Bio-Tech Instruments) is available for nucleic acid/protein quantification as well as fluorescence/luminescence assays.
Leica CM1850 Cryostat – The Leica CM1850 Cryostat is available to make tissue sections for histological staining or immunofluorescent staining.
Horizontal gel electrophoresis apparatus – The Horizontal gel electrophoresis apparatus for DNA and RNA analysis.
BioRad Mini-PROTEAN® electrophoresis and transfer system – The BioRad Mini-PROTEAN® electrophoresis and transfer system is used for SDS-PAGE and Western Blotting needs.
Microscopes
Olympus inverted and reflected light microscopes – Olympus inverted and reflected light microscopes are available for monitoring cell viability and culture growth. An imaging system equipped with a digital camera and an adaptor is connected to the inverted microscope and enables histological examination and capturing important cell behaviors on different substrates.
Zeiss Axio Observer D1 inverted epifluorescent microscope – equipped with 4 filters for detecting DAPI, GFP, Rhodamine and Far-red fluorescent samples – Our Zeiss Axio Observer D1 inverted epifluorescent microscope is equipped with 4 filters for detecting DAPI, GFP, Rhodamine and Far-red fluorescent samples.
Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope – Confocal microscopy is for high resolution and 3-dimensional imaging of samples. It is equipped with an environmental chamber for time-lapse imaging.