Welcome to the website of the Study Center on the Immunogenetics of Infectious Disease (SCIID), a core facility in the Department of Pathology on the 5th floor of Jaharis building. The core facility houses a suite of exciting instruments and provides supportive services that serve to enrich the already excellent research instrumentation within the Tufts/TMC community.
This website contains the description, documented application, as well as the technical information of each instrument within the core facility. You will also find the information on services associated with each instrument offered by the Study Center.
The instruments currently housed by the Study Center:
- Amnis ImageStream
- BTX ECM830 square-ware electroporator with HT-250 multi-well adaptor
- Biacore T100
- CTL Immunospot S5 core analyzer
- BD Influx (formerly Cytopeia) in Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) suite
- Molecular Devices (MDC) FlexStation II
- MDC ImageXpress Micro
- MDC SpectraMax M5
- Spinning disc confocal microscopy
- Tecan Genesis RSP150/8
- Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer
- NanoDrop 2000
The instruments in the center covers a wide range of analytical and research needs. All of them share a common trait of high performance and with design gear toward high through-put applications.
Several of the instruments are optimized to perfrorm high speed and large scale image capturing and analyses. For example, the Amnis ImageStream is an enhanced flow cytometer equipped with a highly sensitive CCD camera as detector, thus allowing the capture of brightfield/darkfield images and fluorescence images up to 5 different colors, at a frequency of 100-200 cells/second. Similarly, the MDC ImageXpress Micro is an fully automated inverted epi-fluorescence microscope with a highly sensitive CCD camera. It offers fully automated imaging operation such as laser-autofocus, automatic filter cubes and objectives switching and automatic sample staging. These features together allow high speed and high quality unattended large scale image capturing. Both imaging platforms come with sophisticated analytical software, allowing automated, efficient and unbiased image analyses and quantification.
The several multi-format multi-function readers in the center together allow data acquisition for wide range of assays, including assays based on absorbance, bioluminesecene, fluorescence, ELISpot. With the built-in fluidics of the FlexStation II, assays measuring fast kinetics reaction, such as Ca++ influx and membrane potential on multiple sample becomes more feasible and robust.
The Biacore T100 is specifically designed to performs interaction study between biomolecules, such as protein-protein, nuleci acids-protein and small molecules/compound-targets interactions. While the experimental format of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) typically requires the sample to be run sequentially, the fully automated design allows unattended operation for up to 96 hours.
Recently two new instruments, NanoDrop 2000 and Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer, were added to the Study Center. These two instruments are both excel in characterizing samples of small volume, range from 0.5 ul to 4ul. The NanoDrop 2000 is a UV to visible (200nm - 850nm) wavelength, fast and easy to use scanning spectrophotometer. It allows user to measure the absorbance of samples with small volume (0.5ul to 2ul, as compared to 50ul to 1ml of a conventional cuvette-based spectrophotometer). The Aglient 2100 Bioanalyzer is an automated micro-capilliary gel electrophoresis system that is compatible with of DNA, RNA (total, mRNA and microRNA) and protein samples. The 2100 Bioanalyer allows users to check the quality and quantity of their samples in an semi-automated manner. The results output can be converted to a format is similar to thoset of conventional electrophoresis techniques such as agarose gel with ethidium bromide and SDS-PAGE/Commassie Blue stain. Yet, it requires significantly smaller sample volume (1ul to 4ul), shorter run time (30 minutes), better resolution and sensitivity.
With this array of exciting instruments, it will be very challenging to summarize all of their capabilities within a few short paragraphs. I sincerely invite you to explore our website, and learn more about our instruments and services. If you have any question or suggestion regarding our instruments, services or website, please feel free to use this form to contact us.
