Facilities

The Locust rearing room is a dedicated 160 square foot facility with a media prep/feeding table, two shelving units for wheatgrass growth and storage, large reach-in temperature and light controlled incubator, and glass-door enclosed locust rearing chamber that is temperature, light and humidity controlled.

The insect injection room lies conveniently across the hall from the rearing room. It is 260 square feet and houses a low bench on one wall for insect injection, a hood for reagent prep, two refrigerators for media and reagent storage and a high bench with sink for collecting embryos and needle pulling. Injection is accomplished via an Eppendorf Injectman 4 automatic micromanipulator and Femtojet 4i Electronic microinjector. Experiments are monitored and recorded via two microscopes; a Leica S9Apo stereozoom microscope with integrated camera and a Leica DMi8 inverted compound microscope with attached camera. Leica LAS software with added time lapse software is used to capture still and video images from both instruments. The entire suite was purchased with funds from the Neuronex initiative.

In addition, needles for injection are pulled on a Sutter instruments P-97 programmable puller.

The Biology department imaging facility is a fee-for-service center available for the training and assistance of all members of the Washington University community, with special emphasis on all departments on the Danforth Campus.  The facility is available for trained users 7 days a week.  In addition, the facility instruments are available for use in university courses, and for upper level undergraduates involved in Bio 500 research.  The facility provides multiple demonstrations yearly for vendors of novel instrumentation, and tours can be arranged for faculty, job candidates and outside groups on request, including outreach tours for approved K-12 groups.  New to 2021, workshops are planned to provide hands-on experience with our newest instruments to help users get the most of their data.