• All Resources
• UB Medical School Facilities
• Roswell Park Shared Resources
• NY Center of Excellence
• Hauptman-Woodward

Facilities and Resources

The major research facilities are located on campus in a state-of-the art Biomedical Sciences Research Building (BRB). The research laboratories are well equipped with modern instrumentation, including high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and Fast Protein Liquid chromatography (FPLC) machines, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) thermocyclers, phosphoimagers, gamma counters, spectrophotometers, large-volume bacterial and cell culture equipment, and all appropriate equipment for cutting-edge biomedical research. The Department also contains facilities for monoclonal antibody production.

A Leica total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscope that can be used to concentrate fluorescence excitation to within a tunable range of 90 to 250 nm is also present at the Department. This produces the ability to limit the field of fluorescence excitation to for instance, the plasma membrane of a cell without exciting the nucleus or other organelles.

The image above shows the results from Widefield flourescence (left), Epi-flourescence with TIRF laser (center), and finally, isolation of membrane flourescence using TIRF (right).

The Witebsky Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology comprises a group of research scientists -- seventeen Principal Investigators, plus their students, post-doctoral fellows, and laboratory staff -- who share a common interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms of infectious diseases and host defenses against them. Furthermore, shared application of genetic, biochemical, and immunological concepts and technologies melds the diverse research foci into a single interactive unit.

A number of services are available at the Medical School or through the nearby Roswell Park Cancer Institute Core Facilities, the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Biomedical Sciences or the Hauptman-Woodward Medial Research Institute.

Medical School Facilities:
Animal facilities are provided in the adjacent building complex with direct access to the BRB. This facility contains a shared BL3 biocontainment suite and a specific pathogen-free facility is also available.
Located on the 4th floor of the BRB is The Confocal Microscopy and Flow Cytometry Core Facility with a Zeiss LSM 510 Meta confocal system, microdissection microscope, flow cytometers with and without single cell sorting capabilities, phosphoimagers, plate readers and quantitative RT-PCR instruments.
Biochemistry Stock Room is located in the nearby Farber Hall and makes available most common reagents and supplies used in biomedical research.
Maldi-tof/Proteomics Core in Farber Hall provides access to mass spectrometric fingerprinting of unknown proteins.
The department takes advantage of the university-wide computer network through which it has access to a variety of analysis software including that for genomic research.

Roswell Park Cancer Institute Facilities:
Bioinformatics Resource provides services in bioinformatics software/database development, customized data analysis, and bioinformatics infrastructure and training.
Gene Expression Resource providing Affymetrix GeneChip technology to researchers.
Biopolymer Resource providing DNA sequencing, Mass spectrometry, oligonucleotide and peptide synthesis and analysis.
Gene targeting and Transgenics Resource enabling investigators to modify the murine genome by transgenic approaches for the systematic dissection of the genetic, molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms underlying complex biological processes.
NMR Resource providing instrumentation and software for acquiring and processing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data for profiling of body fluids (‘metabonomics’) and characterization of bio-molecular structures.
Proteomics Resource offering an array of cutting-edge techniques for separation, identification and characterization of proteins.
shRNA core facility provides sequence validated human and mouse shRNA libraries in virus vectors.

New York State Center of Excellence:
The Center of Excellence contains a number of Core Research Groups addressing various biological processes from a bioinformatic perspective.

The Center for Computational Research provide users with access to enterprise level genomics packages and software for DNA and protein sequence analysis, database search, gene expression analysis, biological pathway analysis, statistical computing, and inferring phylogenies.

The Pathogen and Biodefense group headed by members of the Department provide sequencing services for whole bacterial genomes using a 454 Sequencer.

Faculty at the Department run the Infectious Disease and Genomics laboratory at the COE. This laboratory can analyze Affymetrix Gene Chip microarrays for mouse, human, porcine and many other organisms. The lab also runs an GS 454FLX Titanium sequencer that carries out  shotgun, paired-end and amplicon sequencing.

Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute:
Structural Biology Services provides tools to determine the structures of individual substances such as proteins that play a role in the development of specific diseases.