The general objective of this project is to upgrade the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) animal resource. UCSF has short term and long term goals to improve animal care or services to faculty. This project fits in with both. The project will provide an animal resource for laboratories that conduct neuroscience research, which has been identified by the Dean of the School of Medicine as one of three major areas for development at UCSF in the next five years. These scientists conduct basic research to understand how groups of brain cells work together to generate behavior. They have developed animal models for studying phenomena such as pain, vision, learning and memory, somatic sensation, and sensory control of movement. They conduct experiments on mammals whose brains are organized like the human brain. Species include monkeys, cats, ferrets, and rats. The project will renovate and equip animal holding rooms and a surgical suite that can be used for aseptic survival procedures. This will improve the care of the animals by placing them near the laboratories and offices of the researchers who use them, reducing their contact with potentially infectious agents by eliminating the current need to move them large distances through public corridors, and improving their psychological well- being by providing improved caging and by reducing the number of strangers they encounter. The new surgical suite is required so that neuroscience faculty can conduct some research that is currently not possible and so that they can be ensured access to a facility that is appropriate for their survival surgery procedures. Survival surgery is a critical element of research in integrative neuroscience. The new surgery will provide an optimal facility in which neuroscience faculty will have the first priority to conduct survival procedures under procedures under optimal conditions.
