Tissue culture facility expansion

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Tissue culture has augmented research in biological systems for several decades. It has provided investigators with a highly tractable cell biological tool for addressing basic questions. In more recent years, the study of stem cells has been based almost entirely on the ability of cells extracted from organisms to grow in tissue culture. In some cases, it has obviated the need to use animals in research. Tissue culture is now used by investigators working with a range of organisms, including plants, insects and mammals. Our department includes investigators working with a variety of animals, from Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) to mice. Several of us are working with mammalian (Tropepe, Varmuza) and insect (Tepass, Godt, Ringuette, Romans) tissue culture systems, and one of us is developing a zebrafish tissue culture system (Tropepe). The existing tissue culture facility, originally designed for use by one lab (Tropepe), has experienced tremendous pressure by the advent of use by additional investigators (Varmuza, Godt, Tepass, Ringuette). In addition, the existing facility has recently been reclassified to Biological Safety Containment Level 2 (BL2)  in order to facilitate the construction of lentivirus vectors for use in mammalian cells and embryos by two labs (Tropepe, Varmuza). We now need to assemble additional tissue culture capacity for use by other investigators using either non-mammalian cells (Godt, Tepass, Ringuette, Tropepe, Romans) or mammalian cells at BL1 containment levels (Tropepe, Varmuza). The department has provided space for the installation of a biosafety cabinet, two incubators, a refrigerator, a freezer and a liquid nitrogen storage container for this purpose. The ability to conduct advanced cell research will allow us to make significant contributions to the knowledge base, and to training of highly qualified personnel (HQP).