The facilities available for nutrition research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are excellent. Those facilities include:
The UW Biotechnology Center (UWBC) provides core services for research in molecular and cellular biology, including DNA synthesis and sequencing, bioseparations, peptide synthesis, transgenic and knockout mouse production, a wide-array of mass spectrometry instrumentation for proteomic and metabolomic research, qPCR, and a multimedia technology resource. Courses on bioinformatics are offered to faculty, staff, and students through UWBC. The UWBC also provides expertise in functional genomics, comparative genomics, bioinformatics, and microarray construction and analysis.
The General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) supports clinical research in nutrition. The GCRC provides a controlled environment for studies of normal and abnormal body function and for investigations of the cause, progression, prevention, control, and cure of human disease, and provides resources in which advances in basic scientific knowledge may be translated into new or improved methods of health care.
The UW Comprehensive Cancer Center (UWCCC) is an NCI-supported multidisciplinary center that conducts clinical and laboratory research on the biology of cancer. The UWCCC also provides core services including gene microarray analysis, atomic absorption spectrophotometry, phosphorimaging, and flow cytometry and cytogenetics, proteomics, small animal imaging and pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics services.
The Cardiovascular Imaging Facility is part of the UW Cardiovascular Research Center, it contains the equipment and personnel to perform cardiovascular analysis, including echocardiography and blood pressure monitoring, on small animals.
Flow Cytometry is available from several campus facilities and includes FACS-STAR+ dual laser cell sorters, a FACSCAN analytical instrument, and AUTOCLONE for sorting into multi-well plates.
Imaging instrumentation is available at several campus locations. The Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation is a Biophotonics research laboratory with the mission of developing advanced optical and computational techniques for imaging and experimentally manipulating living specimens. The Keck Laboratory for Biological Imaging in the Medical School, the Waisman Center, Department of Botany and UW Cancer Center all operate confocal microscopes for general campus use. Both the college of engineering and medical school operate shared use electron microscopy facilities. The UW Microscopy Portal provides links to all these resources and others.
Mass spectroscopy facilities are available in the Department of Nutritional Sciences for the isotope ratio analysis of metabolites. Instruments located within the Departments of Biochemistry and Chemistry, and in the State Hygiene Laboratory, adjacent to Nutritional Sciences, include MS coupled to GC and HPLC as well as MALDI. The UW-Madison Biotechnology Center has acquired several mass spectrometers for the analysis of biomolecules for proteomic or metabolomic studies. This includes analysis of proteins, peptides, oligonucleotides, oligosaccharides and other small organic and inorganic molecules. Protein work includes determination of protein identity or post-translational modifications.
Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging facilities for basic research are available in an NIH-funded National Magnetic Resonance Facillity (NMRFAM) housed in the Department of Biochemistry. NMR imaging for clinical applications is available through the Medical School.
The Center for Eukaryotic Structural Genomics is part of the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative (PSI). PSI is a federal, university, and industry effort aimed at dramatically reducing the costs and lessening the time it takes to determine a three-dimensional protein structure. The long-range goal of PSI is to solve 10,000 protein structures in 10 years and to make the three-dimensional atomic-level structures of most proteins easily obtainable from knowledge of their corresponding DNA sequences.
Small animal imaging facility is a recent addition that makes available polarized emission tomography (micro-PET), microprobe NMR, and dual emission-excitation imaging (DEXA) to the campus research community for use on animal models.
Specialized animal facilities include the Gnotobiotic Laboratory, the Harlow Primate Center, the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, a specific pathogen-free swine facility, and housing for avian flocks. Small animal facilities are available in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and in the home departments of other faculty who are trainers on this Training Grant. Specialized caging is available in the Department of Nutritional Sciences for conducting rodent metabolic balance studies and maintaining transgenic mouse lines.