Core Component C: The Virology / Animal Core In order to effectively make use of the technology and labor intensive procedures of viral geneticsand animal procedures, we have established a virology / animal core. Viral mutagenesis is currentlyone of the most powerful technologies available to analyze viral genetics and to test hypothesis onherpes viral latency and reactivation. The burden to our outstanding geneticists, molecular biologistsand other scientists who must expend large amounts of resources engineering and growing viralreagents has limited our progress for years. The creation of a core with expertise in virologicaltechniques will free the virologists and non-virologists to pursue their scientific goal in understanding themechanism of HSV latency and reactivation. Similarly, the addition of expertise in animal procedureswill ensure uniformity in animal experiments between projects, and facilitate the development of anefficient and uniform documentation. The core facility will provide expertise in engineering, selecting and growing viruses. It will, withassistance of the administrative core, maintain an archive of plasmid and viral constructs which will beavailable to the program investigators and for shipment to other laboratories. It will, when requested,assist individual projects by providing an expert for infecting mice with viral stocks (under IACUCanimal protocols assigned to the individual projects). The core facility will also provide expertise inmonitoring mice, in euthanizing animals, and in the collection of tissues for experiments performed (andIACUC approved) for each project.
