Lab Resources
BUGSS is a Biosafety Level 1 lab. Anything not listed on our pre-approved list of substances and organisms will need to be approved by our Biosafety officer before being brought into the lab.
Gel Documentation: Alpha Innotech Gel Imager
It’s an oldy but a goody. Our Alpha Innotech gel imager uses a cooled CCD camera to allow us to capture images of stained DNA, protein and chemiluminescent western blots. The software can be configured to do densitometry and quantification of specific bands and we can use the white light illumination to image cells.
Electrophoresis Machines
Electrophoresis units galore. BUGSS was able to scarf up some great electrophoresis gear from a company going out of business. We’ve got units for running small pre-formed protein gels and for running larger polyacrylamide gels as well as doing 2D electrophoresis. If western blotting is your thing, we’ve got both tank and semi-dry units. We’ve also got a wide selection of horizontal electrophoresis units
PCR Machines
Come and see what your grand-pappy did PCR with! Actually we’ve got both the old and new at BUGSS, an original Perkin Elmer 480 machine circa 1988, and a BioRad icycler with dual 48 well blocks and a 96 well module.
Biosafety Cabinet
Our baxter steriguard provides a class 100 area for working with cells and cultures that you really don’t want contaminated.
Balances, Stirplates, and PH/Conductivity Meter
Mainly used for preparing media and other laboratory solutions.
Centrifuges
We have several high speed (17,000 x g) microfuges and both refrigerated and nonrefrigerated tabletop centrifuges.
Autoclave
The Tomy vertical autoclave is used to prepare sterile solutions, glassware, and other items as well as sterilize the labs biohazardous waste by heating up to 121 degrees C at 15 psi. The vertical design allows tall items such as large flasks, spinner bottles, and bioreactors to be sterilized.
Incubators
BUGSS is equipped with standard microbial incubators for growing cells and both shakers and shaking water bath for cultivation of bacterial and yeast cells in liquid media.
-70 Long Term Storage Freezer
Used for long term storage of microbial (bacteria and yeast) and some mammalian cells. This is where our Master cells banks are kept with lots of biological parts to play with.