Core Facilities for Neurobiology at Brandeis

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This is a proposal to continue NINDS funding of a Core Facility at Brandeis University. This will allow us to fully exploit the three subcomponents that are now firmly established: a microarray and FACS facility, an imaging facility and a mouse/transgenic facility. They are the underpinnings of a large number of NINDS- funded and other neuroscience-relevant research projects on campus. We also propose major expansions of all three existing cores and the establishment of a fourth core. The microarray/FACS facility will be expanded to encompass proteomics thereby becoming the Genomics/Proteomics Core Facility. The imaging facility will be expanded to include Correlated Light and Electron Microscopy (CLEM) and ultra high- resolution cryo-fluorescence imaging thereby become the Imaging/CLEM Core Facility. The mouse/transgenic facility has recently added the capacity to produce Lentiviral vectors for transfection and transgenesis, and is now referred to as the Transgenic Mouse and Viral Transfection Core Facility. Finally, we will establish a new Computational Core Facility to support large scale neural simulations and computational biology projects as part of a large high-performance computing cluster. These additions will allow the Brandeis community to remain at the cutting edge technologically, and ensure that we can continue to generate exciting and ground-breaking new science. The projects supported by the cores are joined together through the shared interests of multiple neuroscience faculty members in basic as well disease- related aspects of brain and neuron function: cell identity, synaptic transmission and circuits, plasticity, behavior and its modulation. The proposed studies will exploit vertebrate and invertebrate model systems, with a strong emphasis on transgenic animals. They address basic and applied problems that are pertinent to a wide range of neurological and psychiatric diseases including disturbances of excitability, such as epilepsy, disturbances of sleep, waking and mood, neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism and Rett Syndrome, neurodegenerative disorders, like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and disturbances of long and short -term memory such as those that accompany Alzheimer's Disease and Schizophrenia.