Molecular and Cellular Instrumentation Facility
The Biology Department strives to give all of our students a diverse and stimulating learning environment. Our faculty utilize a wide range of biological organisms, from protists to songbirds, and provide formative research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students in their labs and classrooms. Biology is excited to have access to cutting edge equipment obtained and supported by research grants, industry partners, and alumni.
WOLF cell sorter
Room: BI 452
The WOLF cell sorter uses microfluidic-based technology and laser detection to isolate homogenous cell populations for students and researchers in the Biology Department. These isolated cells can be used for several downstream applications to investigate numerous research topics, including cellular aging and cancer metastasis.
Olympus BX60 upright fluorescent microscope
Room: BI 336
The Olympus BX60 has filter sets to image florescent molecules and has been recently equipped with an Olympus DP23 color high-resolution camera allowing both students and researchers to effectively image relatively large structures such as pollen tubes and plant root hairs.
Leica iDM6000 inverted automated microscope
Room: BI 455C
The Leica iDM6000 is used by many labs in the Biology Department due to its wide variety of florescent filter sets (DAPI, Fluorescein, Rhodamine, GFP, CFP, YFP, CY5 and mCherry). The stage is fully automated and is equipped with a Leica DFC3000G cooled CCD camera allowing for exciting live-cell imaging of everything from Tetrahymena to human cell lines.
Leica Stellaris 8 White Light Laser Scanning Confocal (w/ FLIM and FCS)
Our Stellaris 8 High-resolution confocal microscope is housed in the Campus SciTech Facilities. It is the most modern and fully featured laser scanning confocal microscope offered by Leica. It is used by students and researchers in several departments in the College of Science and Engineering and enables single molecule imaging all the way up to whole embryo imaging in organisms as wide ranging as yeast to zebrafish.
Leica DFC3000G
The Leica DFC3000G has similar fluorescence imaging capacity (DAPI, Fluorescein, Rhodamine, GFP, CFP, YFP, CY5 and mCherry) as our iDM6000, but also has full environmental control for long-term live-cell imaging. The Hamamatsu ORCA-Flash 4.0 sCMOS camera is able to image at hundreds of frames per second!
Leica DMRB microscope
The Leica DMRB is an all-around research-grade fluorescence, DIC, and phase contrast manual microscope used by students and researchers in the Biology Department. It has DAPI, fluorescein, and Rhodamine fluorescent detection capabilities and is equipped with a SPOT RT3 CCD color filter camera for broad screening and imaging of a broad variety of samples.
Arabidopsis thaliana leaf epidermis expressing MUTEpro:GUS construct highlighting cells of the stomatal lineage.