The Central Core Facility is a cluster of rooms on the 6th floor of the Science Building. One central core room is equipped with three ultracentrifuges and several high-speed centrifuge units (Room 610). Another core facility was established with a cold room and dark room, a scintillation counter, FPLC equipment, an LKB spectrophotometer and a scanning densitometer (Room 613). A new prep room with a glassware washer attached to a deionizing water system and autoclave was also established (Room 612). Ms. Duan Lo is our glass washer. In 2008, the 20-year-old Amsco glassware washing machine was replaced with a new Reliance 500 Steris washer, with all accessories needed to service the entire RCMI community. This room also houses two cooling units for the ultracentrifuges. Likewise, the 1985 Amsco Eagle autoclave was replaced by the Steris 20X20X38 Century Model. The 30-year-old NBS Shaking Incubator, inherited from Dr. Paul Margolin in 1985, was replaced by a NBS Innova 4200. Another central facility room (605A) houses six ultra-low temperature freezers, a SpeedVac system, and a large capacity incubator-shaker (Room 609). The RCMI is responsible for the maintenance contracts for the freezers. Room 609 is separated into two sections by a wall. Another shared instrument room has been established containing an analytical HPLC (Room 613A). Down the hall in room 605 there are 6 temperature control rooms. Investigators can vary the temperature for use as an incubator or a refrigerator. These rooms are old and built into the wall. Maintenance and repairs are the responsibility of the RCMI program. The cost for all of the gases (CO2 and liquid N2, and dry ice is shared by the RCMI program and the Dean's office. The Dean's office covers the service contracts for the autoclaves and the glass washer ($15K/yr). They also pay for the service contract for the X-ray developer in the dark room ($3K/yr). The RCMI program pays for the service contracts on all other equipment. Each user is required to sign-in and Sheila Ehlinger, our chief technician, checks the logbooks daily. She also trains students to use each apparatus. The Central Core facility is used by all RCMI investigators, their post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. Details of each participant are given in the Biographical Sketch Section of this proposal. We are requesting funds for the chief technician, Shelia Ehlinger who oversees all of our core facilities and technicians. We are requesting funds to pay our glassware washer, funds to purchase supplies for our tissue culture facility, funds to purchase an ELISA plate reader, and funds to cover a service contract for two real-time PCR machines. Ms. Sheila Ehlinger is responsible for the supervision of our physical facilities and manages all of our technicians. She makes sure time sheets are on time and reports problems to the PI. She ensures that supplies are maintained on hand, performs simple repairs and ordinary maintenance and coordinates calls to outside service providers when indicated, and follows the repair process to completion. She also coordinates all renovations and purchases for new hires. She is the supervisor for the Central Core Facility and has been with the Program for 20 years. She came to us from NYU where she was Head of Facilities Management for the entire Biological Sciences. We are requesting funds to support our glassware washer, Ms. Duan Lo. Ms. Lo performs the prosaic but essential task of keeping glassware clean and maintaining its availability. She is located in the Central Core (Room 612) and has been with the Program for over 10 years. Ms. Lo retrieves dirty glassware from the laboratories of Gunner, Ali, Small, Janakiraman, Steinberg, Govind, Hubbard, Guyden, Gottlieb, Venkatesh, Pezzano, Spatz, Caplan, Li, Saleque, Levitt, Ryan, Calhoun, Ghose. She then returns dean glassware to each individual laboratory. In the above labs, some glassware needs to be washed every day, some of laboratories need glassware washed three times a week; some wash twice a week. As a result, the machine is used continuously (six times per day, 60 minutes per run). Ms. Lo also autoclaves the waste materials from the above laboratories. We are requesting $16K for replacement of the ELISA plate reader in the Central Core. This equipment is currently more than 10 years old and is heavily used by many members of the Immunology group to screen serum for antibodies, screening hybridoma supernatants and performing ELISAs for cytokine analysis. This is the only ELISA plate reader available to the researchers and the company no longer services the machine. We are also requesting a service contract for the two real-time PCR machines ($5K) currently housed in the flow cytometry core and managed by Jeff Walker. We currently have only two real-time PCR machines that are used almost continuously by researchers from all areas, particularly neurobiology, cancer and immunology. The PCR machine is used on average 18 times per week with very long runtimes. It is used by Steinberg, Ali, Saleque, Pezzano, and Li.
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