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Center Facilities
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| West Complex (front entrance) |
The Center is a fully equipped, stand-alone biomedical research facility on the 7th floor of the MultiStory Building in the West Complex of the University of Virginia Medical Center on Jefferson Park Avenue in Charlottesville. For 50 years this building served as the University Hospital and was entirely renovated in the early 1990s. The corridors and laboratories are beautifully designed and appointed, with oak woodwork and furniture using blue as the accent color. Large windows in the laboratories afford overlooking views of the Medical Center and hills in the nearby countryside, including Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson.
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| Along the central public corridor are (on the right) administrative offices, conference room, cold room, shared-use room, and (on the left) entrances to four of the faculty laboratory suites. |
Spacious laboratory work bays are arrayed along the exterior walls, which includes the front of the building (photo above).
A walkway connects these laboratories; thereby facilitating shared use of equipment, and promoting interaction between laboratory groups. On the interior of the floorplan is a row of faculty offices, desk areas and equipment and tissue culture rooms. A wide public corridor provides access to the Center administrative offices, conference room, cold room, and shared equipment and instruments.
Other laboratories on the rear side of the building have the same arrangement of labs along the outside walls, providing plenty of natural light to all the laboratories. The Center offers an outstanding working environment.
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View in one of the research labs, with D. Brautigan seated at desk in foreground and benches in background, on the front of building.
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The Center for Cell Signaling is well equipped for research involving biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology. Incubators and sterile transfer hoods in multiple locations allow for the culture of bacteria, yeast, or insect and mammalian cells. A dishwashing and autoclave facility supports these activities. Harvesting of cells and initial fractionation employs a variety of superspeed and ultracentrifuges. Protein and enzyme purification utilizes one of the multiple FPLC, HPLC, and traditional chromatography systems in two walk-in coldrooms plus reach-in cold cabinets. Gel electrophoresis and immunoblotting are available in every lab, plus there is a system for high-speed microgel analysis and for 2D-gel separation of proteins. Stained gels are analyzed with a CCD camera imaging system, and those containing radiolabeled molecules are analyzed with a PhosphorImager (Molecular Dynamics). Assays can produce colored products that are analyzed by a UV-visible spectrophotometer or microtiter plates readers with selectable filters, or radiolabeled products that are analyzed with liquid scintillation counters (Beckman). There are three seperate microscope systems for imaging cells, one upright for fixed specimens and two inverted for live specimens. These all have high-speed digital cameras and OpenLab software. These systems can be used to inject individual cells and capture time-lapse movies of the effects. Most recently installed are two Zeiss Confocal Laser Scanning microscopes, in particular the Model 510 meta, which allows rapid scanning and photobleaching to monitor dynamic movements of proteins in living cells.
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Overall, the Center has all the facilities and instrumentation to culture a variety of cells and to produce and purify many different natural or recombinant DNA, proteins and enzymes. These are in turn used as the reagents to study the behavior of cells in response to changing levels of particular components in signaling pathways.
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