Research Facilities
The LRTGT is located in the Victoria Research Laboratories. The offices of the research technicians and Scientific Director of the LRTGT are located on floors 4 and 5, respectively, and they occupy approximately 25 feet of laboratory bench space on the 5th floor within the Children’s Health Research Institute. On the 7th floor of the VRL, there is a barrier area in the Vivarium dedicated to the LRTGT, consisting of a tissue culture suite, an injection suite, storage space for -150°C and -80°C freezers, and a mouse holding room. This space is separated from the rest of the Vivarium by secure card access limiting entry to the technicians and animal care staff. A second -150°C freezer exists within the London Regional Cancer Program to provide back up for ES cells and GM mouse embryos and sperm.
The microinjection suite houses two microinjection stations on vibration-free tables with temperature controlled injection stages. These stations are used for the injection of DNA into one cell embryos and ES cells into blastocysts. One microinjection station is equipped with a Leica inverted microscope and Eppendorf motorized micromanipulators. The other microinjection station is equipped with an Olympus inverted microscope and Narishige hydraulic micromanipulators. There are two surgical stations equipped with stereomicroscopes and fiber optic illuminators for both embryo manipulation and microsurgery. The microinjection suite also contains a horizontal needle puller, two complete sets of surgical tools, scale, bead sterilizer, compact fridge, and freezer as well as a complete setup of computer, video camera, monitor and DVD recorder for teaching purposes.
Within the tissue culture suite there are two laminar flow hoods, two CO2 incubators, water baths, a refrigerated centrifuge, tissue culture microscope, refrigerator, –20°C freezer, one electroporator for gene transfer into embryonic stem cells and an electrofuser for the preparation of tetraploid embryos. The mouse holding room contains racks to hold up to 300 cages that include static microisolator cages. All mouse manipulations take place in a laminar flow hood.
The 150°C freezers have the capacity to store more than 1000 mouse lines and are a major component of the Mouse Embryo/Sperm Bank within LRTGT. The freezers are separated geographically with one located in the LRTGT and the second located in the London Regional Cancer Program. Within the 5th floor laboratory, there are gel electrophoresis units, a refrigerator and -20°C freezer, a thermocycler, two water baths and a refrigerated centrifuge for DNA isolation and preparation.
