Plate reader - Bamfield marine sciences centre

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The Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre (BMSC) supports the research of visiting scientists from over 40 Canadian, U.S. and international institutions who study a wide range of subjects, including marine aspects of comparative physiology, molecular and cell biology, ecology and evolutionary biology, neuroscience, invasive species biology, developmental and reproductive biology, and conservation biology.  Laboratory biologists who utilize BMSC face an acute problem:  it is impractical or expensive to ship specialized equipment from their home laboratories to BMSC.  Furthermore, in addition to depriving research personnel in their home laboratories of its use, some past attempts to ship equipment to BMSC have resulted in irreparable damage or expensive repair bills.  Increasingly, BMSC is becoming a base to a broad range of Canadian comparative physiologists because of the potent mixture of research facilities, high-quality running seawater, and easy access to a great variety of research animals.  The research activities of this growing and highly collaborative group of researchers are increasingly constrained by lack of access to automated equipment that most have in their home laboratories.  A requirement therefore exists for an automated microplate reader/washer/fluorescence system:  1) to support a wide variety of metabolite concentration and enzyme activity assays, 2) to facilitate much more rapid and efficient ELISA assays via an automated plate washing system, and 3) to measure excitation/emission wavelengths using several varieties of fluorophores.  The ability to do such assays will greatly aid researchers who study a wide range of subjects including:  effects of feeding, exercise and stress on fish metabolic and respiratory physiology, tolerance of ammonia and air-exposure in intertidal fish, evolution of blood compartment acid-base regulation and ionic regulation in primitive vertebrates and in euryhaline fish, social and reproductive physiology, and metal toxicity in teleosts, elasmobranchs, and assorted invertebrates.