The Metallomics/Astrobiology facility is housed in Interdisciplinary Science Building 5 (ISTB-5) on the ASU campus. The three adjacent labs are 1) the media-making lab with a ultra-clean laminar flow hood for plastic storage; 2) a molecular biology/protein biochemistry lab with a real-time PCR instrument, a bio-imager, three PCR machines for DNA amplification, centrifuges, storage freezers, a scanning UV-VIS spectrophotometer and temperature-controlled orbital shakers; and 3) a chemostat lab for growth experiments with an incubator and a -80° freezer.
Metallomics/Astrobiology facility
This ULPA filtered hood prevents metal contamination of acid-washed plastics before they are used for making media.
This lab is reserved for making large quantities of media necessary to run long time-scale experiments with microbial cultures in the flow-through chemostats.
This UVP Bio-imager is used to image ethidium-bromide stained DNA gels and chemiluminescent protein immunoblots.
This hood has a shortwave length UV light source to sterlize the surface and allows contamination-free sample transfer.
This hood is designated as the only place in the lab where ethidium bromide use is permitted. DNA gels are poured, loaded and run in this hood.
These two thermal cyclers amplify DNA using PCR. The Eppendorf PCR machine (on the left) is the newest PCR machine in the lab and can perform a temperature gradient during amplification for optimizing the best annealing temperature.
This spectrophotometer is used for measuring the growth rate of microbial cultures and DNA and protein concentrations, among other functions. It can scan wavelengths ranging from 190-1100 nm.
The bead beater breaks up cellular material to permit the extraction of DNA or RNA; the heating block takes small centrifuge tubes and maintains a constant temperature during protocols such as extraction or cloning.
This temperature-controlled microcentrifuge will spin down 0.5-2 mL microcentrifuge vials.
The -80° freezer preserves samples for future analysis; currently, it houses a number of samples from Yellowstone National Park, among others.
This temperature-controlled incubator allows controlled growth of photosynthetic organisms. Shaker tables or bubbling tubes can be used inside the incubator to prevent stagnation.
This orbital shaker has temperature control and will agitate solutions in a smooth manner.
This chemostats feature long tubes that can contain light bulbs to provide an even light source for multiple bottles of photosynthetic organisms. In addition, the bottles are suspended in a constant-temperature water bath, producing constant conditions for controlled growth.
ISTB 5, the lab formerly known as Metallomics, houses a variety of great equipment to investigate the evolution of the metallome, as well as applications to astrobiology.