Resources and Facilities

Northwestern University has made a commitment to create and maintain a superior environment for research in the life sciences, biotechnology and bioengineering. Tens of millions of dollars have been recently spent or are now allocated for construction and renovation of laboratory space for ChE, BME, and BMBCB. The entire Technological Institute building (Tech), which houses the entire McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (MEAS), Chemistry, Physics and a small fraction of BMBCB, has been completely gutted and renovated at the expense of over $110 million. ChE and BME are now housed in a totally refurbished and redesigned section of Tech, with modern and efficient laboratory facilities which meet the highest standards of modern bioengineering research. A new Materials and Life Sciences Building (MLS) houses one third of BMBCB. The rest of BMBCB is housed in the Hogan building which is connected by bridges to both the Tech and MLS buildings. A new building Life Sciences Building is currently under construction. This building is being built next to Hogan and the MLS building and will include 87,000 net sq.f. of research space and a 14,000 net sq.f. vivarium (animal facility). Another 40,000 sq.f. building under construction is the The Institute for Nanotechnology building. Laboratory space will allow room for over 100 postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and visiting scientists plus up to 10 faculty members.

	Papoutsakis Laboratories
	The Papoutsakis laboratories in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department (on the NU Evanston campus) occupies over 2000 sq.f. space, and are made up of three cell culture labs, a microbial and molecular biology laboratory, and several service rooms, in addition to office space rooms.

	Computer Facilities
	A broad range of outstanding computer facilities is available at Northwestern for all our students and staff. Numerous Macintosh and IBM-compatible PCs Pentium 4, Sun, DEC, Silicon Graphics, MicroVAX workstations, and expert-system shells (Guru, ART, G2) are widely available to the students. Powerful specialized or dedicated computers (several with computer graphics) are interfaced with analytical equipment (spectrometers, flow cytometer, X-ray diffractometers, image analysis, scanners).

	Major Equipment
	6 cell culture bioreactors, 6 regular and carbon dioxide incubators, several spinner-culture plates and spinner flssks, a Forma anaerobic chamber, a glucose/lactate analyzer, a thermocycler for PCR, a Varian Vista 6000 gas chromatograph; 2 Waters HPLC systems; a Beckman DU-65 UV spectrophotometer; fluorescence spectrometer; luminometer; liquid-scintillation counter; electroporation equipment; Sorvall RC5B centrifuge; column chromatography equipment; polaroid camera/UV transilluminator; Savant Speed Vac Concentrator; two -90 C freezers; constant temperature incubators; walk-in cold room; incubator/shaker; a blood-gas analyzer, a Coulter counter, 6 laminar-flow hoods, a Becton Dickinson FACSCAN flow cytometer, an inverted microscope, a stereo microscope, a fluorescence microscope, an ELISA reader, protein electrophoresis equipment, liquid-nitrogen storage equipment for culture storage; various small equipment for media preparation, and autoclave.

	Other Frequently Used Resources
	The Biotechnology Research-Services (BRS) facility, the Keck biophysics facility and several other available service facilities (all located in two buildings adjacent to the Tech building where the main laboratories of the PI and Co-I are located ) are readily available for this research project. BRS includes equipment and personnel for state-of-the-art services in nucleic acid and peptide synthesis, and nucleic acid, peptide, and protein analysis. The Keck Biophysics Facility is available to all NU researchers at modest fees and offers a wide spectrum of instruments and expertise for biophysical and biochemical studies. This facility will be used in several of the experiments discussed in the proposal and most importantly in using the Storm PhosphorImager for reading DNA array membranes. Instruments include: a Phosphorimager/fluorimager, HPLC systems, a Kodak electrophoresis documentation and analysis system, an analytical ultracentrifuge, a Real-time radiography Packard Instantimager, a Steady State Fluorescence Spectrometer, a TEM Rapid Freezing and Cryotransfer System, capillary electrophoresis equipment, a Rapid Quench Flow Instrument, and a UV/VIS/NIR Spectrophotometer among many others. A Q-RT-PCR machine (ABI Prism 7700 Sequence Detection System (Applied Biosystems)) is also available to us in a nearby (Takahashi) laboratory.
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Northwestern has provided or guaranteed substantial funds for the purchase and maintenance of major equipment and facilities that are vital for research in the life sciences and bioengineering. These shared Research Facilities, beyond the laboratory facilities of the Training Faculty members, are described in detail in the NU web site Shared Research Facilities at Northwestern University, and include:

	Biotechnology Research-Services Facility
	Includes equipment and personnel for state-of-the-art services in nucleic acid and peptide synthesis; nucleic acid, peptide, and protein analysis; and DNA array analysis and expertise. [More Infomation]
	The Keck Biophysics Facility
	An internationally unique resource for the study of the structures and interactions of biological and synthetic macro-molecules located in the MLS building. This facility was created by NU's Center for Structural Biology with grants from the W.M.Keck Foundation and additional support from NIH, the Rice Foundation, and the Robert H.Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center [More Information]
	The Analytical Services Laboratory
	Specializes in spectroscopic analysis (NMR, infrared, mass, atomic adsorption, X-ray, UV-Vis, GC-MS, GC, fluorescence, and polarimetry). [More Information]
	The Flow Cytometry Facility
	Provides the research community with 24-hour access to a flow cytometry facility equipped with "user-friendly" machines on which researchers perform their own analyses. [More Information]
	Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center Central Facilities
	Provides low-cost media, sera, tissue culture reagents, molecular biology enzymes and kits to researchers and laboratories at Northwestern and affiliated hospitals. [More Information]
	The Biological Electron Microscope Facility (Evanston Campus)
	Serves to enable students, staff, and faculty to conduct studies that include both scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Freeze-fracturing and sputter-coating as well as photographic copy facilities are also available here. [More Information]
	The Laser-Based Microscopy and Digital Imaging Facility
	Provides equipment, instruction, and technical support in the use of lasers and digital imaging techniques in microscopy. The following techniques are available: optical tweezers, laser surgery, digital imaging, imaging of intracellular Ca²⁺ or pH, and immunocytochemical and autoradiographic imaging. [More Information]
	The Confocal Microscope Facility
	Makes confocal technology available to the NU community and to train researchers in the use of this equipment. [More Information]
	The Macromolecular Crystallography, Spectroscopy, and Computation Facility
	Provides interdepartmental shared resources for x-ray crystallography, optical spectroscopy, biochemical computation, and computer-aided drug design (CADD). Additional spectroscopy and computational resources are available within the University as well as through additional sources. Resources are also available through participation in the DuPont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team at the Advanced Photon Source located in the Argonne National Laboratories in suburban Chicago. [More Information]
	The Materials Research Center
	An NSF-sponsored Center for the synthesis and characterization of materials, include the Advanced Optical Facility, Electron Magnetic Resonance Facility, Electron Probe Instrumentation Facility, Magnet and Low Temperature Facility, Materials Processing and Crystal Growth Facility, Mechanical Behavior and Fatigue Facility, Synchrotron Facility, and the X-Ray Diffraction Facility. [More Information]
	Targeted Mutagenesis Facility
	The goal of this facility is to generate chimeric (knock-out) mice by using homologous recombination and embryonic stem (ES) cells for biomedical research conducted by investigators of Northwestern University, Northwestern University Medical School, Children's Memorial Institute for Education and Research (CMIER), and other affiliated institutions. [More Information]
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