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Picture courtesy of
Dr. Edward Arnold (Rutgers University)
Center for Molecular Biophysics
& Biophysical Chemistry
Rutgers University
610 Taylor Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854
Phone: 732/445-6376
Fax: 732/445-1493
Research facilities in molecular biophysics at Rutgers and UMDNJ are clustered in four primary locations on the Busch Science Campus in Piscataway, New Jersey. These include the Wright-Rieman Chemistry Laboratories, the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and the New Jersey Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine with a combined total of roughly 150,000 ft2 space dedicated to research in molecular biophysics. The New Jersey Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine is adjacent to the Waksman Institute and the Medical School and a short walk from the Chemistry building. Facilities in the Computing and Research Education (CoRE), Engineering, Food Science, and Hill Center buildings are also available to the program. All are located on the Busch Campus, with the exception of the Food Science Building (Cook Campus).
Major Research Instrumentation
Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers |
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Research facilities in molecular biophysics at Rutgers and UMDNJ are clustered in four primary locations on the Busch Science Campus in Piscataway, New Jersey. These include the Wright-Rieman Chemistry Laboratories, the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and the New Jersey Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine with a combined total of roughly 150,000 ft2 space dedicated to research in molecular biophysics. The New Jersey Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine is adjacent to the Waksman Institute and the Medical School and a short walk from the Chemistry building. Facilities in the Computing and Research Education (CoRE), Engineering, Food Science, and Hill Center buildings are also available to the program. All are located on the Busch Campus, with the exception of the Food Science Building (Cook Campus).
Instrumentation
Department of Chemistry: The Wright-Rieman Chemistry Laboratories house major instrumentation for the preparation and analysis of molecular structures. It also is the home for the Institute for Biological, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences Interfaces (BioMaPS), New Jersey Center for Biomaterials, the Center for Molecular Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry, the Nucleic Acid Database Project, High Performance Computing Project in Chemistry, the Laboratory for Surface Modification, and the Protein Data Bank. The offices and research laboratories of Drs. Baum, Berman, Breslauer, Isied, Jones, Krogh-Jespersen, Lee, Levy, Manning, Olson, Talaga, and Taylor occupy approximately 32,500 ft2 of this facility. Workshops for glassblowing, electronics, and mechanical work are also found here.
Waksman Institute: Facilities in the Waksman Institute include (1) a reading room with over 20,000 volumes on microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics; (2) the molecular biology computing laboratory serving over 500 users; (3) a crystallography suite for macromolecular studies; and (4) a modern computerized cell and cell products fermentation facility that has completed equipment validation and prepared Standard Operating Procedures for such equipment. This validation, allows the Institute to meet requests for the manufacture of preclinical products in compliance with current good laboratory practices and current good manufacturing practices compliance. All equipment in the fermentation facility is certified to NIST standards, and features: facility containment designation - BL2-LS; an explosion-proof downstream processing room; batch, semi-continuous, or continuous mode operation; process control via PID algorithm-based, cascade-capable, time and event-based profiling; GC/MS off-gas analysis. The Waksman Institute also houses Dr. Ebright's laboratory and office, and Dr. Sengupta's and Dr. Shraiman's wet laboratory.
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School: The Medical School houses New Jersey Biotechnology Center Network Laboratories dedicated to Bioimaging, Biomaterials Development, and DNA Synthesis. It also includes the laboratories and offices of Drs. Brodsky, Carr, Gartenberg, Inouye, Lenard, Pilch, Stock, T. J. Thomas, and Thresia Thomas.
Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine: The 123,00 ft2 facility of the New Jersey Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine includes the laboratories of Drs. Anderson, Arnold, Montelione, and Stock. A matrix-assisted laser desorption time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry facility equipped with a PE Biosystems de-PRO mass spectrometer is located here. Shared facilities provide strong research infrastructure for X-ray crystallography and NMR including the capability for high-throughput protein sample production, structure determination, and bioinformatics developed by the Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium directed by Dr. Montelione,
The BioMaPS Institute: Core laboratory facilities contain a combined total of roughly 80,000 ft2, which are primarily located in four buildings that are in close proximity. These buildings house computers, laboratories, administrative offices for bioinformatics Web sites, lecture halls, libraries, and DIMACS conferences. Research laboratories are individually equipped with state-of-the-art equipment suitable for the application of the mathematical and/or physical sciences to biological problems. Participating laboratories house a variety of laser, helium scattering, mass spectrophotometer, microwave, ultrahigh-vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy, and X-ray fluorescence equipment. Notably, collaboration at the Institute among theoreticians and experimentalists, such as in the analysis of data from single-molecule fluorescence experiments and fluorescence resonance energy transfer, has increased the power of available infrastructure.
Biomedical Engineering: The biomedical engineering laboratories contain the specialized equipment and other facilities needed for research and education in a number of areas in this field, including the development of medical instruments and devices. Extensive computer facilities are available for special and general-purpose applications in biomedicine and related fields. The extensive laboratories of other departments within Rutgers and UMDNJ are also available for special studies and research.
Computing Research and Education/Hill Center: The Computing, Research and Education (CoRE) building is located on the Busch Campus. Facilities include Industrial Engineering Offices, Department of Computer Science, Computer Science Research Lab, Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, Electrical Computer Engineering offices, and the Center for Computer Aid for Industrial Productivity. Dr. Kulikowski's offices are located in this building. The Hill Center is adjacent to the CoRE building and contains facilities for the BioMaPS Institute, Computer Science Department, Department of Mathematics, Mathematical Sciences Library, Laboratory for Numerical Fluid Dynamics, Statistics Department, BSD UNIX System Programmers, Graphics Lab, Undergraduate Suns Workstations, Micrographics Center, NJ Computer Applications Group, Operations and Remotes group, and Telecommunications Lab. The office and laboratories of Dr. Farach-Colton, and the offices of Drs. Ruckenstein, Sengupta and Shraiman are located in this facility.
Engineering/Mechanics: The Engineering program at Rutgers is spread over four buildings on the Busch campus. One building contains the Department of Ceramics and specialized laboratories for nanosructured materials research. The second houses facilities for the Dean of Engineering, Engineering Computer Center, Mechanics and Materials Science, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Bureau of Engineering Research, and the Center for Computational Modeling of Aircraft. Dr. Coleman occupies approximately 1,500 ft2 of this facility in the Mechanics and Materials Science department. Building C houses the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department and the microcomputer laboratory, and the Fiber Optics Materials Research Program. The fourth engineering building contains the Microelectronics Research Lab, Acoustics, Thermal Convection, Computational Fluid Dynamics, and the Main Bay Instructional laboratories.
Food Science: This building houses facilities for the Food Science Department and the Center for Advanced Food Technology. The facility includes laboratories in food chemistry, food biophysics, food biology and microbiology, food engineering, and sensory science. The facility includes advanced instrumentation for analytical chemistry and mass spectrometry; fluorescence, atomic force, and electron microscopy; rheology; high pressure processing; cell culture; and proteomics. The Food Science building is located on the Cook Campus in New Brunswick and is adjacent to the Nabisco Center. Dr. Ludescher's research lab occupies approximately 1,500 ft2 of this facility and includes instrumentation for steady-state fluorescence and both steady-state and time-resolved phosphorescence.
Students in the molecular biophysics program have access to a wide variety of instrumentation. Major instrumentation of direct relevance to molecular biophysics is listed below.
Lasers/Spectrometers: Lasers and spectrophotometers: Supersonic jet and molecular beam apparatuses; nanosecond laser flash photolysis system; diode-array stop-flow spectrophotometer; temperature-programmable ORD-CD spectropolarimeters; temperature-controlled fluorescence spectrophotometer; low-temperature FTIR spectrophotometers; high resolution UV/Visible and Raman spectrophotometers; YAG, excimer, and tunable dye lasers. A SPEX model F1T11i spectrofluoro-meter with polarization optics, temperature controlled sample compartment, T-format emission, and pulsed lamp phosphorimeter attachment can be found in the Food Science building.
X-ray Crystallography: The X-ray crystallography laboratory at the Waksman Institute is a core facility co-funded by Rutgers and UMDNJ. It is equipped with two Rigaku RU 200, fine focus rotating anode X-ray generators and three Oxford cryogenic crystal cooling systems. The detection systems include a Rigaku RAXIS II (image plate system), RAXIS IV (image plate system) and an Area Detector Systems Corporation Charge Coupled Device (CCD). There is an on site cold room for crystal mounting, a computer room for data analysis and three Silicon Graphics Computers for data acquisition, control and data analysis. Other instrumentation in the Wright-Rieman laboratories includes: Smart APEX CCD single-crystal diffraction system (Bruker-AXS), with Mo or Cu target available. Data collection times are 2-16 hr; two CAD4 diffractometers using sealed X-ray tube, Mo or Cu target, with low or high temperatures available from a liquid nitrogen boil-off system (ú150 to +150C); HiStar multiwire area detector (Bruker-AXS) on a 3-kW FR571 rotating anode X-ray generator (Nonius) with graphite monochromatized fine focus Cu radiation, and a low-temperature environment from an FTS refrigerated air system (ú25 to +25C) or an Oxford Cryosystems liquid nitrogen system (ú170 to +25C). Polycrystalline, protein or other polymer samples are analyzed. A Weissenberg, back-reflection Laue or precession camera is also available on this generator, although these are used primarily for teaching purposes; an instructional (macromolecular) crystallization lab and complete computational facilities are incorporated into the X-ray lab.
Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers: Instrumentation in the Wright-Rieman Laboratories consists of six multinuclear instruments--a 600 MHz Varian INOVA, a 500 MHz Varian INOVA, a 400 MHz Varian Unity, a 300MHz Varian Mercury, a 200 MHz Varian VXR-200 with solid-state capabilities, and a 200 MHZ Varian GEMINI and at Center for Biotechnology and Medicine, a 600 and 500 MHz Varian INOVA spectrometer. The instruments are linked to computer facilities.
Electron Microscopes: A Zeiss Laser Scanning Confocal microscope, which is located in the Medical School is available to all members of the UMDNJ/Rutgers University communities. The Zeiss LSM 410 microscope is an inverted Zeiss Microscope with mechanical stage and motorized z-axis. Features include Ar/Kr Laser with lines at 488, 568 nM for green and red fluorochromes, He/Ne Laser with a line at 633 nM for far red fluorochromes, 10X Air, 20X Air, 40X water dipping and 63X oil immersion planapochromat objectives, two photomultiplier tubes for simultaneous 2 color detection, transmitted light detector for DIC and bright field imaging, standard preparations on slides or living cells/tissue in glass-bottomed Petri dishes or other carriers, Pentium 60 computer running Windows 98 with 2.9 Gbyte hard drive, CD-ROM writer for permanent data storage fully and is networked for data transfer.
Surface Analysis Equipment: Available equipment includes an ultrahigh vacuum surface analysis systems with facilities for Auger, photoelectron (XPS & UPS), and electron energy loss (HREELS) spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, low energy electron diffraction (LEED), electron stimulated desorption ion angular distribution (ESDIAD) measurements, low energy ion scattering, and He atom scattering; scanning tunneling microscopes; atomic force microscopes.
Thermochemical Instrumentation: Available equipment in the Wright-Rieman Laboratories and the Medical School includes stopped-flow isothermal mixing calorimeter; hypersensitive isothermal titration calorimeter; pressure-variable differential scanning calorimeter; batch, titration, and differential scanning calorimeters.
Other Major Instrumentation: SQUID magnetometer; GC/quadrupole mass spectrometer; inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometer; automated DNA and peptide synthesizers; high-performance liquid chromatographs.
Computer Facilities:
There are first rate facilities for research in quantitative biology on the campus including an ultra-high bandwidth network (Gigabit/sec) which links the sites and includes the Distributed Computing Resource for Computational Molecular Biology, a variety of multi-processor Silicon Graphics Servers, and high resolution graphics workstations. For example, the High Performance Computing Project, a joint facility of the BioMaPS Institute and the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, operates a cluster with seven 4-processor SGI Origin 200 servers (28 CPUs) and four Linux clusters with a total of 100 CPUs. The computer and molecular graphics facilities provide the necessary resources for the several computationally intensive research programs. The computer facilities consist of a diverse mix of hardware including 21 assorted Silicon Graphics workstations, 7 Hewlett Packard workstations, and several SUN workstations. More than 150 X-terminals, Macintoshes, and PCs on four local area networks (LANS) with associated network hardware to facilitate network connectivity for the entire building providing access to these workstations and the Internet. Computer graphics facilities include a variety of Silicon Graphics workstations and Macintosh computers, color dye sublimation printers, color laser printers, and pen plotters. University computing facilities include a cluster of SUN computers.
Computer equipment found at the Medical School includes various IBM compatible computers, a BioRad Model GS250 Molecular Imager and a Silicon Graphics workstation, three Gateway 2000 computers (P166 MHz with Pentium processor), one Gateway 2000 computer (4DX2-66 Intel 66 MHz 80 486 DX2). There is also a Macintosh LCIII computer, a Power Macintosh 6100, an Apple Laser Writer II printer, an Epson Stylus Pro XC Color printer, a Hewlett Packard Laser Jet II and III printers as well as a Polaroid HR6000 slide machine and Kodak Digital DC 50 camera, Macintosh Classis II computer and two Powerbook Macintosh laptop computers with an Apple printer for use by faculty, staff and students. In addition, the University has mainframe facilities that include an HP9000 (available on a time-share basis) and a Vax 11/785 that contains all current databases.
Computing equipment at the Molecular Biology Computing Laboratory includes MIPS RISC processors, 512 Megabytes of RAM, multiple high bandwidth SCSI disk controllers for high speed (RAID) hard disk storage, dual 100 Megabit Fast Ethernet boards for network access and a total of 300 Gigabyte Digital Linear Tape (DLT) library provides system backup. Other equipment includes an Agfa PCRII 4K Film-recorder with postscript capability, an Agfa 1200 x 1200 Flatbed scanner, a Umax 1200 x 2400 firewire Flatbed scanner, the Polaroid Sprintscan 35 slide scanner and the Kodak 8600PS dye-sub photo printer, a 600 dpi HP 5siMX double-sided laser printer, three Apple Power Macintosh G4 computers with 512 Megabytes of RAM and 36 Gigabyte disks in each, a 190 MHz SGI Octane Graphics Workstation, a Tektronix 780 1200 dpi color laser printer and another SGI 225 MHz Octane Graphics Workstation, a HP DesignJet 800 PS wide 42 inch 1200 x 1200 dpi printer. At the heart of the Waksman network is a Cisco 7505 router, and fiber optic wiring. The system not only supports current desktop equipment (Macintosh, PC and UNIX workstations) but will also allow support the future Fast Ethernet equipped machines as well.
Communications:
The Rutgers University Network (RUNet) is an essential information infrastructure project designed to address thevoice, video, and data communications needs of the University. The project is one of the major academic-support growth areas outlined in the university's strategic plan. The network supports a broad range of faculty and student research in such areas as biomedicine, high performance computing, pharmaceutical chemistry, and neuroscience. Researchers communicate with their colleagues throughout the world and establish collaborative programs easily. They gain access to collections of data, information, and digitized images, including collections of artwork that would otherwise be difficult to access. The network also facilitates the high bandwidth connections the University requires as a key member of Internet2, the national initiative to accelerate the next generation of the Internet.
In addition to the research/computer/communication resources, students also have access to the following:
Cell and Cell Products Fermentation Facility: This satellite facility of the CABM is capable of producing cells and cell products in quantities that are not economically or technically possible in most laboratories. The facility includes one 700 liter and three 75 liter Chemap-USA fermenters, a number of smaller reactors, a Satori control system and mass spectrometer.
Libraries: The Chemistry library, which has a collection of over 8,000 monographs and subscriptions to more than 200 periodicals, is located in Wright-Rieman Laboratories. In addition, the outstanding facilities, services, and collection of the Library of Science and Medicine are only a short walk from Wright-Rieman Laboratories. The Physics and Mathematical Sciences Libraries are also located nearby.
The Library of Science and Medicine owns over 259,000 monographs, 210,600 bound periodical volumes, approximately 478,000 government documents, 792,000 microform items, thousands of maps, and held subscriptions to over 2600 serials. Online journal resources in the sciences include major publisher packages such as ScienceDirect, the American Chemical Society journal collection, the American Physical Society collection, the BioOne collection, etc. Literature searching across the full spectrum of the sciences is supported by access to dozens of databases such as Biosis Previews for the life sciences, IEEE Xplore for engineering, INSPEC for physics, Medline for medicine, SciFinder Scholar for chemistry, and Web of Science for interdisciplinary studies. According to 2001/2002 statistics, the Rutgers Library system contained 2,647,366 monographs; 715,454 bound periodicals; 20,833 current subscriptions, 2,542,161 government documents; 4,459,3297 microform items; and 133,009 audio/visual materials.
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