2013 Annual Report of the Core Facility Platform

I  Construction of the core facility platform

    The core facility platform in institute of neuroscience was set up on May, 2013, funded by the Project 985 for the crux of discipline construction.

    The core facility platform consists of three platforms which are the imaging platform, biochemical platform and animal behavior platform.

    The imaging platform is equipped by Olympus FV1000 inverted laser scanning confocal microscope, Zeiss upright laser scanning confocal microscope, Ionscope scanning ion-conductance microscope and 64 channel neural data acquisition system. It has recently adapted an Olympus FV1000 inverted laser scanning confocal, an upright fluorescent microscope and an inverted fluorescent microscope equipped with live imaging work stationkindly contributed by PIs in the institute.We have set up multi-channel analysis system for neuron signals and patch clamp system combined with laser scanning microscopy.

    The biochemical platformis equipped by Milli-Q intergral water purification system, Varioskan Flash spectral scanning multimode reader and Bio-Rad CFX96 touch real-time PCR detection system. Milli-Q integral water purification system can directly purify tap-water into high quality and stability Class II pure water and Class I ultrapure water. Varioskan Flash spectral scanning multimode readerhas four optical gratings and unlimited wavelength selection. The instrument can detect optical density, fluorescence and chemiluminescence. It can scan 6-1536-well plates. Three onboard dispensers can meet the fast kinetics needs of the experiments. Bio-Rad CFX96 real time PCR detection system is equipped with six long-life LEDs and six photodiodes. The photodiodes has fixed optical distance and can maximize fluorescence excitation signal. Because six photodiodes separately detect fluorescence signal, there is no cross-interference between fluoresceins and the instrument can simultaneously detect five target genes. In addition, the data analysis software is also very powerful and can simultaneously analyze more than 5,000 samples.

    The animal behavior platform, also named as “animal behavior and neuroscience” facility platform,  is equipped by Morris water maze system, fear conditioning, shuttle box, open field, elevated plus maze, forced swimming, tail suspension , radial arm maze, startle response, contextual conditioning and five choice Serial Reaction system.The platform can meet the researchers on animal behavior testing, such as animal exploration, learning and memory, anxiety and depression, addiction and social activity. Researchers can perform systematic study of animal cognition and emotion through the platform.

II Technical team in the core facility platform

The platform has now 5 full-time technicians, of whom 3 own doctoral degree and 1 owns master degree, in service for daily maintenance of the platform and technical support. The responsible officer of the platform is Dr. Sanhua Fang (fshfbzxhq@zju.edu.cn), who has been educated in Southwest Medical Center of Texas University.

III Operation of the core facility platform

In year 2013, the imaging platform and biochemical platform have trained a total of 173 users. The imaging platform has served 16 PIs in their research needs, with a total running time of 1362 hours. The biochemical platform has served 13 PIs with a total running time of 363 hours.

The animal behavior platform has trained a total of 82 users from 12 PIs’ laboratories. The total running time of the equipments is 1139 hours. Not only opening to users in the neuroscience institute, the platform also served users from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the College of Life Sciences and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University.