Instruments Available in the Comparative Genomics Center
ABI PRISM 3130XL Genetic Analyzer
Capillary electrophoresis system with fluorescence detection.  16 capillaries, loads smaples from 96-well or 384-well plates.  This 3130XL usually has an 80 cm capillary array installed with POP7 polymer.  Configured for long read sequence runs and fragment analysis runs. DNA Sequencing page	Good for automated fluorescent sequencing of longer templates and fluorescent DNA fragment analysis using 1000 bp size markers.
ABI PRISM 3730 Genetic Analyzer
Capillary electrophoresis system with fluorescence detection.  48 capillaries, loads samples from 96-well or 384-well plates.  This 3730 usually has a 50 cm capillary array installed with POP7 polymer.  Configured for sequence and fragment analysis runs.  Fragment Analysis page,  DNA Sequencing page	Good for higher-throughput automated fluorescent sequencing and fragment analysis.
MJ Research Chromo4 four color Real Time PCR system
A simple and compact real time PCR machine that uses LED's as light sources and runs and reads PCR reactions in low profile 96-well plates.  Has thermal gradient capability like the Dyad thermocyclers (below).  Capable of up to 4 color multiplexing. Chromo4	Good for various quantitative PCR experiments, including relative expression studies, absolute quantitation, sensitive target sequence detection, etc.  Can use SYBR Green, TaqMan probes, most other Q-PCR probe chemistries.
Perkin Elmer Victor3 V multi-mode Plate Reader.
A versatile plate reader that can use just about any plate format from petri dish up to 1536 wells.  It reads in optical absorbance, fluorescence, time-resolved fluorescence, fluorescence polarization, and luminescence modes.  It has reagent injectors, shaking, and temperature controlled incubation for the sample plate.  Can be programmed to run virtually any biochemical assay that uses some form of optical detection to obtain the data.  The assays possible depend on the selection of filters available.  Victor3 V	Good for enzyme assays, ELISAs, fluorescent nucleic acid quantitation assays, SnP genotyping, luciferase assays, reporter gene assays, etc.  All in mid- to high throughput plate based formats.
Amersham Storm 860 Phosphorimager/Fluorimager
The Storm 860 uses storage phosphor screens which are sensitive to ionizing radiation but not to light.  You can typically get an image of your radioactive blot or gel more quickly than you can on film, no freezer is needed for long exposures,plus you get the quantitative data on the signal strength automatically and you can quickly and easily compare the strength of bands to each other.  In addition to radionuclide detection, you can also get quantitative fluorescence intensity data for bands on a fluorescent-stained gel or blot with this instrument.  It has blue and red lasers to cover most of the commonly used fluorescent dyes.  Amersham bought Molecular Dynamics, who actually developed these phosphorimagers.  Storm 860	Good for most things you would otherwise use X-Ray film for, like Southern/Northern blots, slot blots, etc.  Also good for fluorescent stained gels, SYBR stains, Western blots, and so forth.  With imaging resolution to 50 microns you could even pick up fairly fine structure in leaf or tissue slices.
Qiagen BioRobot 8000
A very flexible, programmable, liquid handling Robot designed to carry out protocols for most of the nucleic acid extraction kits Qiagen sells.  It includes 8 independent pipetting probes, 8-channel buffer dispensing head, vacuum manifold, heating/cooling station, plate shaker, and various kinds of plate and rack stackers.  It can do just about any laboratory procedure in a 96-well plate format.  BioRobot	Good for many plasmid mini-preps and genomic DNA preps, PCR reactions clean up, sequencing reaction clean up, 96 well plate assay set up, "cherry picking" from several plates into one, etc.
Apricot Personal Pipettor PP125N-XD
A 96 well and 384 well plate pipetting system with exchangeable pipetting heads.  The Apricot can use both fixed steel probes and disposable plastic tips with various configurations.  The largest disposable tips allow for pipetting volumes up to 500 uL while the smallest allow a minimum volume of 0.5 uL. Apricot	Good for replicating plates, dispensing templates from storage plates, preparing dilutions in plates, dispensing reagents or media into plates.
MJ Research Dyad Thermocyclers for PCR
The CGC has 2 MJR Dyad twin block thermocyclers with exchangeable peltier blocks.  This allows us to swap individual blocks between 96-well and 384-well plate formats as needed.  These thermocyclers have gradient capability and can create up to a 20 degree C gradient across the long dimension of the block. Thermocyclers page	Good for all types of PCR experiments which don't require optical detection, heating sequence or fragment analysis samples for denaturation and resuspension, etc.
Sigma 4-15C Laboratory Centrifuge
This centrifuge has a rotor which holds two deep swinging buckets which fit 96/384-well plates and stacks of 96-well filter plates and deep well blocks which can accept the filtrates.  The centrifuge is intended to complement  the BioRobot 8000 by providing an alternative to vacuum filtration for some Qiagen DNA prep protocols and custom protocols using 96-well plate formats.  It is capable of speeds of over 5700 rpms, ~6000xG. SIGMA centrifuge	Good for many Qiagen preps where starting cell or tissue extracts are too viscous or fibrous to pass through filters under vacuum force.  Also good for ethanol precipitations for DNA purification in 96-well plates.
Retsch Mixer Mill 300
The Mixer Mill 300 is a bead beater designed to work with a pair of 96-place deep well blocks or tube arrays and heavy tungsten carbide beads to grind plant tissue and similar materials for DNA preps.  It is used with the Qiagen DNeasy 96 Plant genomic DNA prep kit.  The shaking intensity and time can both be adjusted to suit the material being processed. Mixer Mill	The Mixer Mill allows one to grind 192 samples at once in 96-place tube arrays.  Can be used for a variety of purposes including the Qiagen DNeasy preps.
BioRad PDS1000/He Biolistic Particle Delivery System
The PDS 1000/He system "fires" nano gold of tungsten particles which can be coated with your DNA into biological samples.  This allows DNA transformation of cells and tissues which are impractical to transform by most other means. It is frequently used for plant tissues. Biolistic&Misc	Users provide their own consumables, including burst membranes, screens, and gold/tungsten particles.
General Laboratory Equipment
IEC Centra 7R 4 place refrigerated swinging bucket plate centrifuge, up to ~3000 rpms with the plate rotor.
Fisher low speed benchtop microfuges
Vortex Genie 2 vortex mixers
Rainin LTS Single channel manual pipettors
Rainin LTS 8-channel manual pipettors
Rainin LTS Single channel electronic pipettors
Rainin LTS 8-channel electronic pipettors
Beckman Microfuge 12  72-place microcentrifugefuge, up to 12,000 rpms.
Gel electrophoresis rig for submarine agarose gels
Basic selection of glassware
Mettler electronic balance
Orion pH meter
Digital dry heating block
Stir/heating plate
Virtis large-sample Lyophilizer