Main Lab The main laboratory consists of 2 large rooms containing approximately 1500 sq. ft. These rooms are used for routine molecular biology experiments. All postdocs, graduate students and technicians have their own desk and dedicated bench space in these rooms. A separate isotope facility is located between the labs and is used exclusively for radioactive labeling, sequencing, hybridizations and isotope storage. In addition, a new histology lab containing a cryostat, microtome embedding center and tissue processor exists plus a separate microscope facility. The microscope facility contains a Wild dissecting microscope, Olympus inverted phase contrast microscope and an Olympus fluorescence microscope with full fluorescence capabilities (RITC, FITC, DAPI). Each microscope is attached to a digital camera and monitor, allowing images to be captured on IBM-compatible PCs driven by Pentium processors for storage and data retrieval. All of the necessary equipment required for our work currently is in place in the lab. Major equipment includes Beckman ultracentrifuges, Beckman LS6000SC scintillation counter, 2 -80^oC freezers, a Sorval high speed centrifuge, Pharmacia spectrophotometers, Mettler analytical and pan balances, a Berthold luminometer, Corning ultrapure still, Brinkman microfuges, table-top centrifuges, constant and variable temperature water baths, Trio-block and Uni-block DNA amplifiers (PCR), low voltage power supplies, agarose and acrylamide gel electrophoresis equipment, refrigerators, -20^oC freezers and several fume hoods. Adjacent rooms also contain E. coli and yeast incubators, table top shaking incubators, BioRad Gene Pulser II electroporator, waterbaths, U.V. light boxes, Spectrolinker UV crosslinker, Eppendorf microfuges, tabletop centrifuges, sequencing gel apparatuses, 3 4000 volt power supplies, 3 shaker incubators for hybridizations, micro- and table-top centrifuges, 1 fume hood, Savant speed vac and cold trap, 2 sequencing gel dryers plus refrigerators and -20^oC freezers. We also have 2 tissue culture rooms which house 5 NuAire CO₂ incubators, 3 NuAire laminar flow hoods, an Olympus inverted phase contrast microscope, an Olympus dissecting microscope, 5 liquid N2 cell freezers, 2 waterbaths and a tabletop centrifuge.

Animals The Purdue Small Animal Care Facility is located in the Lilly Hall of Life Sciences, which is adjacent to the Hansen Building. In addition, the Purdue Cancer Center Transgenic Mouse Core Facility is located in the basement of Hansen and is available for the generation of conventional transgenic mice as well as gene "knock-out" mice. All mice are housed in micro-isolator cages.

Computers The lab contains a separate computer room which includes both Macintosh and PC platforms with all of the necessary software for data analysis, image analysis and word processing capabilities. The facility also contains Laser Printers and Color Printers plus Hewlett Packard Scanners that are used in conjunction with the MacVector program for the analysis of DNA sequences.

Other Facilities The Hansen Life Sciences Research Building contains several essential core facilities, including oligonucleotide synthesis, peptide synthesis, automated DNA sequencing, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy and transgenic mouse production. The Department of Biological Sciences also maintains excellent support facilities including a state-of-the-art genomics center, a cabinet shop, machine shop, equipment repair center, professional photographer and scientific illustrator plus 3 full-time computer technicians.