Core A. Phenotyping The mission of the Phenotyping Core A is to provide standardized analytical methodologies and services to assist the Project Investigators in efficiently achieving the Scientific Aims of their respective projects. The Core will provide targeted phenotyping of both mouse models and human subjects, as well as providing selected reagents used by the Projects. The Core is organized into 5 Sub-Cores, which will provide the following services: 1) An Atherosclerosis Morphology Sub-Core to provide qualitative and quantitative analyses of mouse atherosclerosis. 2) Liver Morphology Sub-Core to provide qualitative and quantitative analysis of mouse liver histology in the context of NASH and fibrosis. 3) Targeted Lipidomic Analysis Sub-Core to provide analyses of plasma and tissues in the UCSD LIPID MAPS Lipidomic Core. 4) Targeted Proteomic Sub-Core to provide high- throughput, high- sensitivity analysis of cytokines, chemokines and other analytes with the use of Luminex Bio- Plex technology and 5). Lipoprotein Sub-Core, which will measure lipid and lipoprotein levels in mouse plasma and also provide standardized preparations of LDL and modified LDLs (and other needed lipoproteins) for investigators? use. The Core will be centered and organized in Dr. Witztum's laboratory at UCSD, who will be the overall director and responsible to see that all of the Sub-Cores fulfill their missions. The Atherosclerosis Morphology and Liver Morphology Sub-Cores will be housed at UCSD under the Direction of Dr. Witztum with assistance of a UCSD expert in liver pathology (Dr. Tatiana Kisseleva), as will the services of the Lipoprotein Core. High- throughput selected proteomic type analyses of cytokines, chemokines and related proteins will be performed at the Salk Institute under the direction of Drs. Ron Evans and Michael Downes. Finally, the Lipid Maps Lipidomic Core, under the direction of Drs. Oswald Quehenberger and Ed Dennis is also located at UCSD in the same building as Dr. Witztum?s laboratories. Thus, all sample collection will be centralized in a central laboratory at UCSD, where they will be logged into an Excel spreadsheet to provide a central organizational pathway for distribution of samples to proper Sub-Cores and in turn, a central site for data collection of results.
