Research Facilities

Animal Services | Biomolecular Resource Facility | Microscopy and Cytometry Resource Facility | Information Technology and Communications Unit | Technical Services

Animal Services

In 2001 the Animal Services Division experienced some disruption due to partial refurbishment of the central Animal Breeding Establishment and the complete refurbishment of the animal holding Wing F. Both buildings were initially constructed in the late 1950s and the upgrading was essential. Within the Animal Breeding Establishment this included a new operating theatre, and significant refurbishment to rabbit and pig areas. Wing F, formerly a wing holding sheep, pigs, mice and rats, now has 27 HEPA filtered mice rooms together with ancillary service wash-up and sterilization facilities. The new wing is now a high standard mouse research facility.

2001 also saw the cessation of the Reproductive Physiology sheep operation within the School and at Spring Valley Farm. The administration of Spring Valley farm returned to the University's Facilities and Services section at the end of 2001.

The Animal Services Division continued to expand it number of mouse strains, particularly in terms of transgenic and knockout mice, with the total strain number now around 108. The Specific Pathogen Free mouse production unit is at full capacity with it being necessary to delete or embryo cryopreserve strains to make way for new introductions. New mouse strains originate from within Australia and overseas and ensure the AQIS approved mouse quarantine facility is in constant use.

Simon Bain, Head

 

Biomolecular Resource Facility

 

The Biomolecular Resource Facility provides cost effective access to DNA and protein technologies for researchers at JCSMR and the broader ANU and Canberra research communities. Our core services are DNA and protein sequencing and peptide synthesis. An Affymetrix GeneChip Microarray system was installed during 2001. This fully supported microarray unit will be incorporated into the Facility as a core service. In addition we provide access to equipment and expertise that would not normally be readily available to individual research groups. Karen Edwards

This includes a real-time PCR machine, PCR robot and a SMART system and AKTA Explorer for biological liquid chromatography.

2001 saw some major changes to the BRF. A number of new appointments were made: Karen Edwards commenced as Manager in August, Peter Milburn as Technical Specialist in September and Natalia Snarskaya as Microarray coordinator also in September. The oligonucleotide synthesis service was discontinued from the end of 2001. We wish Marjo well and thank her for all her hard work and contribution to the BRF team.

Karen Edwards, Head

 

Microscopy and Cytometry Resource Facility (MCRF)

Microscopy Unit

The Microscopy Unit expanded further into the fluorescence microscopy field with arrival of a BioRad multiphoton microscope. Multi photon excitation works by using short pulses of low energy light to excite the standard fluorescent probes. Some of the advantages are no sample photobleaching outside the focal plane, images collected deeper in the sample (thicker samples), and reduced damage to living cells.

The Radiance 2000 confocal microscope usage has grown in the past year. It has 3 lasers Argon, (488 and 514nm) Green HeNe (543nm) and Red diode (638nm) allowing a large range of probes to be used.

The Unit also has a Hitachi H7000 transmission electron microscope and 2 fluorescent microscopes with digital cameras.

Histology Laboratory

Histology had another busy year in 2001 with the number of job requests rising by 27%. The service provides training in equipment use, troubleshooting procedural and staining problems, advice on staining needs as well as a full service for light microscopy. Histology has been involved in the JCSMR Open Days during the Science Festival as well as the Post Graduate Mini Symposium for PhD students on the services available and their applications. Users outside of JCSMR include BaMBI, CSIRO Entomology Unit, CSIRO Pest Animal Control Unit as well as some work received from New Zealand and Germany.

Anne Prins

Flow Cytometry Unit

This year marked the arrival of the new Becton Dickinson LSR Benchtop Flow Cytometer. The LSR is equipped with three lasers (488nm argon-ion, 325nm UV, 633nm HeNe) and 6 fluorescence detectors which offer the researchers greater flexibility in the design of multicolor experiments. The LSR's parameter ratio capabilities and the attached temperature control unit make it the ideal instrument for Calcium flux applications. Geoffrey Osborne

The Flow Cytometry Unit also has the Becton Dickinson FACStar plus cell sorter with triple laser bench and 4 fluorescence parameters, as well as 2 Becton Dickinson FACScans with 3 fluorescence parameter capability.

There has been a constant demand for Flow Cytometry services from within the
JCSMR and the ANU. A wide variety of experiments, e.g. four color Phenotyping, Ca++ studies, GFP and rare cell sorting, single cell deposition, occupy the majority of the Cellsorter time, whereas the Facscans are mainly used for Phenotyping, Cell tracking and DNA Cell Cycle analysis of mammalian and plant cells.

Cathy Gillespie, Head

 

 

Information Technology and Communications Unit

2001 saw the merger of the IT Unit and Photography. While the unit is still physically split in two main areas, they are both on the second floor, and coordinating shared resources, such as a new single public access area that also freed up desparately needed space in the helpdesk area. The two areas are now covering for each other when demands on one area grow suddenly: such as during school-wide software audits and virus sweeps.

Courses are continuing to be taught in the training room built last year, with outside instructors beginning to teach courses there as well.

Demands on the desktop support area grew significantly for several reasons: a policy of only installing auditable software, authentication and permission restrictions at central file servers, a new breed of multiple vector Microsoft Windows phages (viruses, trojans, and worms), the takeup of MacOS X, a school firewall, and moving all desktop machines to a new, larger, uniform Internet number space.

Poster printing in Photography using the now small and unreliable A1 poster printer was stopped, as the old printer and laminator were too expensive to justify replacing. Poster production is now outsourced. New public resources available in Photography include an autofeeding color scanner, a large screen workstation, and a solid-ink color printer. Digital photographs of the entire staff have been collected and used for both the ID badges and the staff board.

Many quiet changes were made in central network services. Roughly half the staff in JCSMR now have single-user authenticated accounts on both the fileserver and web server, with permission groups being established to allow sharing while complete authentication is still occuring. Network autoconfiguration using DHCP has been implemented school-wide, generally eliminating the conflicts that often occured when one user would inadvertently take over the address of another. This autoconfiguration was used to manage the bulk of the changeover to a new uniform IP address range, and is also used by the software auditing programs. The school's network is behind a fairly permissive firewall that logs the address and type of all incoming and outgoing connections - which are often used in diagnosing network problems and spotting security problems. Bandwidth use stabilized after midyear, and was reduced by 6.2% from the estimated traffic subscription. Half of this reduction was due to use of a local web proxy by the heaviest users in the school during the last half of the year. The rest was due to reductions in unnecessary traffic as revealed by the firewall logs.

The JCSMR web pages have become more automated, with the introduction of a daily summary of changes that the web manager can review, statistical summaries of accesses, and dynamic generation of required headers and footers on pages. Many positive comments about the professional appearance and currency of the web pages have been received.

A Java FACS simulator was developed, to allow training on simulated instruments rather than using valuable time on real instruments.

A central database with web and direct interfaces has also been developed, with many new and existing databases being merged into this new facility. The database supports full change histories, authenticated and encrypted connections, and automated consistency constraints. Custom database views and reports are also supported.

Applications rolled out on this database so far include secure electronic conference registrations and a wide variety of computer records. Human resources and purchasing are moving the bulk of their records into this database, and many other projects depending on this database are under development.

The two programmers employed to work on CBiS projects have completed the first version of a laboratory SNP database with a custom web interface, statistical analysis via the R program, authentication, row-level permissions on data access, encrypted database and web access, and full change histories. Development of the database will continue to add support for microarray, clinical, and other varieties of data.

There are currently 291 Microsoft Windows®, 253 Apple Macintosh® , 41 Linux®, 9 Irix® , 7 other unixes, 43 network printers, and a handful of other dedicated devices on the school's ethernet network.

Drake Diedrich, Head

 

Technical Services

This section provides technical support services for all School divisions. In order to cater for such diverse needs the staff have expertise in carpentry, refrigeration, instrument making, machining, plumbing, electronics and electrical fields. The section is active in providing innovative design and construction of new equipment, maintenance and repair of existing plant and instruments, and refurbishment of the school building, laboratories and plant. Maintenance and other work by organisations external to the school is coordinated by section staff. In general, the function of the Technical Services Section is to satisfy the school's needs for those specialist services not readily available locally, and to this end a conscientious effort is made to keep informed of the latest techniques in its many and varied areas of activity.

Richard Friend, Head