Biology capabilities

Read about our Biology capabilities.

Cell, tissue and bacterial culture

We have a fully-equipped, climate-controlled cell/tissue culture laboratory and separate bacterial culture facilities, as well as 2-D, 3-D, primary and GM cell line culture and storage to add to our epithelium and co-culture expertise. This expands to:

  • primary cell isolations
  • H&S management (incl. HTA, GMO, primary isolations, cell shipping, mycoplasma screening)
  • bacterial culture and colony management
  • FACs*

Plate-based assays

PHERAstar FSX (BMG Labtech) and two FlexStation 3 (Molecular Devices) multimode microplate readers cover a range of absorbance, fluorescence, luminescence, kinetic and colorimetric assays, including:

  • cell proliferation/viability
  • calcium mobilisation
  • Indirect functional assays (YFP-quench, Thallium flux, Vm-sensitive dyes)
  • enzyme kinetics
  • biochemical assays
  • ELISAs.

Molecular biology and genetic techniques

This includes:

  • transient and stable transfection, including biochemical and electroporation (e.g. Nucleofector [Amaxa]*)
  • stable cell line generation
  • synthetic DNA constructs (full-length, truncated, mutagenesis, chimeras)
  • cloning, sequence analysis and PCR
  • RT-qPCR
  • Western blotting and analysis
  • amplification, extraction and purification of plasmid DNA.

Visualisation techniques

These include:

  • high content imaging for phenotypic analysis and nuclei counting (Operetta [PerkinElmer]*)
  • fluorescence and confocal microscopy*
  • immunohistochemistry.

Electrophysiology

Conventional microelectrode techniques include:

  • whole-cell voltage and current clamp, perforated patch, single-channel recording and fast microperfusion (Dynaflow; fluicell)
  • planar patch-clamp suite (link [Sophion]), 1-8 channel/assay development (QPatch Compact), 16-channel (QPatch-16), 48-channel (QPatch-II)
  • Ussings chamber recording (2 x 8-channel rigs) for intact epithelial studies
  • automated liquid handling for compound library management and screening preparation (Fluidex, Viaflo, Wellmate).

Protein production and structural biology

This includes:

  • plasmid construct design for crystallography and expression systems (bacterial, Baclovirus)
  • purification, including affinity chromatography, size exclusion (AKTA) and membrane protein purification
  • protein binding/target engagement, thermal shift assay, quantification by MST, ITC and binding analysis (circular dichroism)*#
  • structural determination of protein folding/secondary/tertiary structure analysis, including X-ray crystallography (protein alone, protein/ligand complexes),* cryo-EM and structure-based fragment screening (XChem)#
  • structural bioinformatics, sequence and structural analysis of targets, modelling and docking (Autodock)

Industry-standard data curation

We use Dotmatics and StarDrop.

Teaching

Teaching is provided at all levels, including postgraduate lab supervision (MSc and PhD projects) and undergraduate talks/lectures/open days.

 

*Available via core facility sharing within the School of Life Sciences

#Work carried in conjuction with Diamond Light Source, Oxford