Lab Resources
We share a large laboratory wing with Dr. S. A. Cameron, housed on the second floor of Morrill Hall at the University of Illinois. The recently renovated laboratory area consists of an area for working with specimens at 4 Leica and 2 Leitz stereoscopic microscopes (equipped with drawing and digital photographic attachments), office space for faculty, postdocs and students, and two molecular systematics lab benches.
The molecular systematics portion of the lab is an excellent facility for the collection and analysis of molecular data for phylogenetic analysis. The primary research space comprises 1500 square feet and is equipped with a thermal cycler for PCR, three electrophoresis apparati for agarose gels and their appropriate power supplies, balances, microfuges, ultracold freezer (-80 C) for storage of samples, two lab refrigerators (4 C) and one -20 C freezer for storage of samples and reagents, an 18-megaohm ultrapure water system, 2 chemical fume hoods, and nearby darkroom facilities. Also available are a shared autoclave and ice machine.
The lab also houses several Macintosh G4 desktops and laptops, and a Pentium chip PC for Windows-based software. All of these have high-speed internet access to the University of Illinois servers. We have a large library of software for phylogenetic analyses, including PAUP* 4.0 (with updated beta versions), MacClade 4.0, MrBayes 3.0, and the latest versions of PHYLIP, COMPONENT, NONA, SplitsTree, Spectronet, TreeFitter, GenTree, TREEMAP, DIVA, COMPARE, MEGA, fastDNAml, MALIGN, POY and CLUSTAL. Sequence analysis and management are performed via the programs BioEdit, EditView, SeqEd and SeqPup.
|
 |
