ANIMAL AND IMAGING CORE FACILITY

In this issue of the newsletter, we will be highlighting the research being carried out by the Animal and Imaging Core Facility at DDI, led by Dr. Ashraf Madhoun.

NEWS AND VIEWS

The animal facility hosts new batches of Spague-Dawley rats and C57 mice

Published on 01/11/2019

1. The animal facility hosts new batches of Spague-Dawley rats and C57 mice. Scientists are welcome to utilize these animals for their existing and upcoming projects.

2. The protocol for the genome editing CRISPR technology used for gene knockout is well established at the Genetics and Bioinformatics department and the Animal and Imaging Core Facility department. Several primary cells lines have been generated for genes including Caveolin-1 and NRF2 which will be further characterized in the context of diabetes, adipogenesis and signaling pathways. In addition, knockout for genes including ABCC12, GCGRa, GCGRb and slc45a2 (albino) genes in zebrafish. As observed in the below image, slc45a2 knockout abolishes the body and fin pigmentation, which facilitates visualizing the fish internal organs for further studies including body fat accumulation as a fish model for obesity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmb0NQ9hftc

3. Imaging Facility: in addition to the variety of state-of-art microscopes, the high content imaging system, Operetta platform is up running. The system can acquire, analyze and manage fluorescence, brightfield and digital phase contrast images. It can be used for several applications including fixed and live-cell assays and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) for protein conformational changes and protein-protein interactions within living cells. As observed in the below image, interactions between THP1 macrophages and endothelial cells in response to TNFα treatments.