The Department of Cell and Developmental Biology is located in the School of Medicine. The Department is primarily located in Taylor Hall, where approximately 30,000 square feet of space is occupied by departmental office and laboratory facilities. In addition, departmental faculty occupy approximately 7500 square feet of office and laboratory space in adjacent research buildings.

The laboratories house instrumentation for transmission, scanning, intermediate high voltage and freeze fracture electron microscopy, as well as equipment to prepare biological specimens for these techniques. The Electron Microscope Laboratories contain a JEOL 6300 SEM with an Orion digital photography system and X-ray analysis. The facility also houses a Tecnai 12 120 kV TEM with a Gatan Multi-scan digital camera. Ancillary facilities include equipment for ultra-and cryomicrotomy, critical point drying, sputter coating and a state of the art, high resolution Reichert cyrofracture system. A world class facility is available for optical imaging of all kinds: digitized video microscopy; confocal microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, nanovid microscopy; and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching.

Accurate physiological measurements are essential for modern research in neurobiology. Sophisticated electrophysiological facilities are maintained in several individual faculty laboratories, including facilities for single cell recording and microinjection of neurons, telemetry to monitor cochlear microphonic potentials in unrestrained animals and patch-clamp recording. Instrumentation for modern cell and molecular biological research is widely available in the department, including equipment for preparative and ultracentrifugation; gel electrophoresis, high performance liquid chromatography and fastprotein liquid chromatography; spectrophotometry and spectrofluorophotometry; scintillation counting; calorimetry; autoradiography; immunocytochemistry; radioimmunoassay; membrane and protein purification; DNA cloning and sequencing (gel scanners, phosphoimager); in situ hybridization and other techniques of modern tissue, cell and molecular biology.

The research performed in the labs of individual faculty members is supported by a number of department facilities/resources. The Taylor Hall Glassware Facility, located on the fourth floor of the building, houses equipment for dishwashing/drying and autoclaving. Facility staff members are responsible for washing/drying glassware and autoclaving research materials for laboratories within the department. There is an automated film processor and phosphoimager in the department. In addition, there is a departmental digital imaging facility with flatbed scanner, negative scanner, Macintosh and IBM computers, software for working with digital images, a color printer and Fuji printer.

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