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