Core Facilities Available
As part of our mission to leverage and expand Colorado’s leadership in biotechnology, the BioFrontiers Institute is working to provide core facilities services, equipment and expertise to the CU community, research institutions and the biotech industry.
In an effort to coordinate efforts, the core labs affiliated with BioFrontiers or those co-located in the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building are listed below with a description of their services and equipment, contact information and whether they are currently taking work from outside the university.
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This facility houses an Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencer, a MiSeq sequencer and the Illumina iCompute infrastructure to support data analysis. Core Manager, Jim Huntley, has extensive experience constructing sequencing libraries and providing guidance on a variety of sequencing applications.
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The imaging facility hosts several microscopes, including a Nikon A1R Confocal system. The lab's director, Dr. Amy Palmer and the lab's manager Kevin Dean have a deep knowledge of the imaging systems and bring experience with fluorescent technologies for imaging applications.
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Mass spectrometry-based proteomics has become a key technology in modern biological research. This lab's high high-resolution instruments enable the identification of thousands of proteins in a single sample. Lab Director, William Old, develops mass spectrometry methods and solutions for challenging biological questions. Dr. Dan Gu provides expertise in all aspects of small molecule analysis and analytical separations.
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Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Facility Manager Rich Shoemaker maintains several NMR spectrometers at a variety of magnetic fields, including the Bruker Avance-III 400, as well as computational resources. Shoemaker has been supporting local biotech companies with these services for more than a decade.
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Functional Genomics Facility
Currently we administer ~125,000 shRNAs targeting ~18,000 human genes and ~80,000 shRNAs targeting ~ 14,000 mouse genes. We provide lentiviral vectors encoding short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) from the human and mouse TRC 1 &1.5 libraries. These libraries were originally created by the RNAi Consortium at the Broad Institute (MIT), and are now commercialized by SIGMA-Aldrich under the brand name MISSION® shRNA.
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This facility is equipped with instrumentation for high-throughput and high-content biochemical and cell-based assays, including live-cell assays. Lab Director Xiang Wang is available to support the drug discovery process, including data analysis and lead identification and validation. The facility also offers a series of viability assays and human cancer cell lines.
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Biomolecular X-Ray Crystallography Lab
This lab houses a Phoenix dropsetter for crystallization, RockImager system for crystal imaging and two Rigaku R-axis IV++ image plate systems.
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The BL-2 certified cell culture facility in JSCBB is shared by all Biochemistry investigators and is equipped with twelve containment hoods. Six of these are for general use, two hoods are specific for primary cell culture work and two are located in a separate room for use with virus. In addition, there is a horizontal, laminar flow hood for use with large volume cultures and a restricted hood for Salmonella invasion studies of mammalian cell hosts. There are thirteen CO2 incubators as well as an incubator and shaker for working with insect cell cultures. The facility has the ability to do experiments requiring hypoxic conditions. It also has two automated liquid nitrogen storage units and an inverted microscope with both light and fluorescence sources. The facility is supervised by Theresa Nahreini who trains all users in sterile techniques and oversees daily operations of media preparation, mycoplasma testing and maintenance of cell lines.
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