Core--ANIMAL, GENOTYPING, CELL & TISSUE (AGCT)

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The Animal, Genotyping, Cell & Tissue (AGCT) Core will provide technical and personnel support for breeding animals, facilitating, standardizing, and implementing animal genotyping and the collection, management and analysis of tissue samples. The AGCT Core Facility will serve all investigators who will be needing assistance with (1) animal care, breeding and immunization, (2) collection of tissue and/or body fluid, (3) all genotyping for Projects ny Finnegan, Zhang, and Mikecz along the marker-assisted backcrossing ("speed congenic") processes, (4) basic cell culture methods, (5) standardized testing for assessment of the development and progression of arthritis, and (6) processing samples for histology and evaluation of tissue samples. The AGCT Core intends to aid each project by providing technical, instrumental and personnel support which are (i) commonly used by several projects or (ii) occasionally used by investigators but require special technical or safety regulations or (iii) special equipment or technical experience. In addition, the AGCT Core offers basic statistical and necessary bioinformatic analysis. The AGCT Core facility, based on the expected demands of this application, will consist of four units. The Animal Care Core Unit will design and perform genotype-controlled breeding, immunize animals according to the needs of the investigators and assess the progression of arthritis in PI-independent (blind) manner. Thus, this Unit will serve all projects generating and testing animals ready for use by individual projects. The Genotyping Core Unit serves all projects needing genotyping along the backcrossing processes. This includes sample collection for genomic DNA isolation, record keeping and labeling animals, and genotyping of animals with strain-specific polymorphic markers. Due to the large number of animals and multiple congenic/sub-congenic lines, the marker-assisted breeding process of Project by Glant and selection of animals with appropriate (required) recombinations does not belong to this core. On the other hand, the same person (director of this core and co-investigator of Project by Glant ) will control all animal breeding and genotyping experiments. The Cell and Tissue Testing Core Unit will support all investigators by collecting animal tissues and human cartilage, preparing antigens for immunization, and tissue and serum samples for standardized testing. This unit will be responsible for sample storage, record keeping and data management of collected samples, and evaluate/score histological specimens. This core unit will help investigators collect cells or tissues for specialized analysis (e.g. peripheral blood, spleen cells, or establish primary cell cultures), perform histology and/or genotyping tests of cells, and store tissue samples for further analyses. The BiostatisticallBioinformatics Core Unit will standardize and perform statistical analysis and support investigators in data management.