The Institute of Biological Chemistry is housed in Clark Hall, containing modern, well-equipped laboratories. Each laboratory possesses tools and instrumentation for biochemical and molecular biological research that, depending on the faculty’s needs, range from sophisticated spectroscopic instrumentation, FPLCs, BioCad chromatography systems, HPLCs, and gas chromatographs, to shaker and gravity incubators, video imaging equipment, protein and nucleic acid electrophoresis equipment, as well as other common laboratory instruments.
In addition, the Institute has several isolated radiochemical synthesis laboratories, a darkroom with automatic x-ray film developer, three fully-equipped tissue culture rooms with laminar flow hoods, cold rooms, walk-in freezer rooms, and a machine shop. The Biological Mass Spectrometry Laboratory in the Institute contains a set of four dedicated spectrometers and inlet-ionization systems for the analysis of the complete range of biological molecules from low molecular weight, volatile organics to proteins. Also, there are 1,300 square feet of plant growth facilities and 11,250 sq. ft. of greenhouse and walk-in growth facilities to support the Institute’s research programs.
University facilities available to the Institute are the Owens Science Library, the Electron Microscopy Center (Confocal, TEM and SEM), Laboratory Animal Resource Center (antibody production), Bioanalytical Laboratory (analytical ultracentrifugation, amino acid analysis, nucleic acid and protein synthesis and sequencing, etc.), Biological NMR Spectroscopy Center (300, 400, and 500 MHz multinuclear NMR spectrometers, EPR spectrometer [Bruker ESP 300, gGHz]), Analytical Instrumentation Center (high resolution MS, and MALDI-TOP), Molecular Science Computing Center and a Biological X-ray Crystallography facility.
New at IBC
Phenomics
Modern sciences and in particular agricultural sciences are based on high-throughput technologies. In recent years ‘omic’ approaches have been developed to analyze entire genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes or metaboloms of individual organisms as well as large number of individuals within a population. This has important implications for future trends in science, including plant-breeding programs to take crop production through the second ‘green revolution’. However, one of the major limitations hindering this advancement is high-throughput characterization of plant physiological parameters (phenotyping) to select for desired traits. Recent technical advancement in remote sensing technologies for high-throughput phenotyping paved the way for releasing this ‘phenotyping bottleneck’. Recognizing this unique opportunity WSU established a Phenomics facility to develop high-throughput plant phenotyping. Since 2011 the Phenomics facility has been fully operational and has served as a platform for high-throughput plant phenotyping. Since August 2014 the facility is officially an open access WSU facility.
Facilities