Equipment

Available for walk-up use:

Victor 3V plate reader
Odyssey Infrared Imager

Liquid Handlers:

Biomek FX

The SMSF has 2 Biomek FX liquid handlers. The Biomek FX allows for pippetting in both 96 and 384 well assay plate formats. Our Span-8 head enables us to program advanced liquid handling techniques custom tailored to the needs of our investigators. Check out this awesome video!

Biotek µFill

The µFill reagent dispenser (Bio-Tek Instruments, Inc.) can dispense 5-6000ul of reagent into 96 or 384 well plates. The µFill can be used in place of the Biomek FX to save on tip costs to deliver assay reagents, wash cells, or deliver detection reagents to assay plates.

Plate Readers:

Tecan Safire II

The facility uses a Safire II plate reader (Tecan, inc.) with stackers to detect absorbance, fluorescence or luminescence in 96 and 384 well plates.

Perkin Elmer Victor 3-V

The facility has a Victor 3-V plate reader equipped with stackers and a barcode reader available for both screening and walk-up use.

Other Equipment:

LI-COR Odyssey Imager

The Odyssey ® Infrared Imaging System sweeps away the old paradigms of chemiluminescence and visible fluorescence, and introduces a new standard for Western blot analysis - direct infrared fluorescence detection. Infrared detection gives you the quantitative analysis and wide linear dynamic range that chemiluminescence can't. Strong and weak bands on the same blot are accurately detected without the uncertainty and inconvenience of multiple exposures, and without spending time in the darkroom. The Odyssey System gives you clear, sharp, reproducible bands without fuzziness or "blowout". Bands hidden by overexposure with chemiluminescence become clear when imaged with Odyssey.

VI-Cell

The Vi-CELL automates the widely accepted trypan blue cell exclusion method for cell counting and viability determination. Historically, cell viability determinations were performed manually using a light microscope and hemacytometer. This technique has major shortcomings due to subjective determination of cell count, as well as manual, time consuming steps. In comparison to the manual technique, the Vi-CELL automatically performs the trypan blue with video imaging of the flow-through cell. Results are obtained in minutes