High Capacity Microbial Growth Core Facility

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We are requesting financial support to purchase two high-capacity, variable temperature and speed Eppendorf New Brunswick Innova 44 Incubator Shakers. These units will replace two 20 year old shakers that are no longer working or repairable. Incubator shakers are temperature-controlled, growth chambers with a variable speed orbital platform used for growing cell cultures, cell aeration, and expression and solubility studies. The ability to grow microbiological cultures at precise temperatures and agitation rates is absolutely essential for nearly every biological research discipline, particularly when cells need to grow to specific physiological or metabolic states, culture densities, or to ensure proper gene expression. The two replacement shakers will be used by the 12 internationally recognized labs comprising the Plant & Microbial Biology group of the Department of Cell & Systems Biology, which includes ~50 graduate students, 9 postdoctoral fellow, and ~42 undergraduate students. Additional the shaking incubators are also used by the Centre for the Analysis of Genome Evolution & Function (a genomics and proteomics core facility), and two CSB undergraduate laboratory courses that train ~75 undergraduates every year. The shakers are a critical piece of research infrastructure that is used by nearly all HQP in the Plant & Microbial Biology group. Incubator shakers are essential for students studying host-microbe interactions or growing microbiological stocks for molecular biology, biochemistry, and structural biology experiments. If we are not able to replace the non-functional shakers, some students will experience very significant research delays, while other students will not be able to perform their research at all due to their inability to grow risk group 2 organisms. Although there are two additional shakers available in our building, there is no way to provide the needed growth capacity with half of our shakers out of service, resulting in very significant bottlenecks and research delays. Further, the two broken shakers were used for both biosafety risk group (RG) 1 and RG2 organisms, and are located in a biohazard containment level 2 laboratory located on the 4th floor of our building, while the two remaining shakers are in a 3rd floor lab that cannot be rated for RG2 organisms. While RG1 organisms can be moved between labs with precautions, RG2 organisms cannot be transported without very significant care. Consequently, if we do not replace the two broken shakers it will be necessary to carry RG1 organisms between floors, which is highly problematic, and it will simply be impossible to work with RG2 organisms. Finally, the two working shaking incubators are 15 years ago and starting to experience failures. These units are no longer supported and replacement parts are extremely difficult to source, so they are coming to the end of their life span. No other large-capacity incubator shaker are available.