FACILITIES:

School of Medicine

The basic medical science departments: Anatomy and Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pharmacology Physiology and Therapeutics, and Microbiology and Immunology, are located in the Edwin C. James Medical Research Facility at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. Complementing the research facility is the Karl Christian Wold, M.D., Bio-Information Learning Resources Center. The center contains the Harley E. French Library of the Health Sciences, a dedicated medical library which maintains a diverse collection of print and electronic resources; three (a 260 seat, and two 100 seat) telecommunications auditoriums equipped for interactive television and computer presentations; and numerous study areas and cluster rooms for conference and small-group learning sessions. In addition to the research facility and the information center the School of Medicine also contains a Health Science Bookstore and most recently the relocation and construction of a new $6 million Animal Care Facility.

The Department

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is housed on the second floor of the Edwin C. James Research Facility. The Department contains laboratory and office space for eight faculty that is arranged around a common area that houses communally-shared equipment. The common area also contains a walk-in cold room, a dark room, an autoclave, and a MilliQ water purification system. The Department has a spacious conference room that contains the Journal of Biological Chemistry dating back to 1965. A graduate student room provides space outside the laboratory for study, computer work, and writing projects. A Departmental lounge is available for use by all Departmental personnel.

Equipment

The department has a variety of shared scientific equipment which include: four ultra cold freezers, two Beckman Avanti J-25 centrifuges, Beckman J6-MI centrifuge, Sorvall RC-5B centrifuge, a Beckman GS-6R bench top centrifuge, Beckman L8-80 and LE-80 ultracentrifuges, Beckman TL-100 bench top ultracentifuge, two Beckman DU-640 spectrophotometers, a Beckman DU-64 spectrophotometer, a Beckman DU-8 spectrophotometer, a Shimadzu RF-540 Spectrofluorophotometer , three freeze dryers, three gel dryers, a Savant Speed Vac Concentrator, two Beckman High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) systems, Beckman LS-6500 and Packard 1900CA Scintillation Counters, a Bio-Rad GS-670 Densitometor, a UVP GDS8000 Gel Documentation System, a Polaroid MP-4 Camera with UV transilluminator and light table, Bio-Rad Gene Pulsers (bacterial and mammalian), cell culture hoods and incubators, two inverted phase contrast microscopes, a Boehringer Lumi-Imager, a Affinity Sensors Plasmon Resonance Biosenor (IAsys), a Dyna-Pro 80ITC light scatterer, and numerous incubators, water baths, hybridization chambers, and thermocyclers located in various laboratories. The department also contains a number of computers for faculty and student use: such as a Laptop and digital projector for presentations, a 566MHz Pentium with color scanner and CD-write drive, a 400MHz Pentium with DVD player, a G3 Macintosh, and two Silicon Graphics Workstations (Indigo and Octane) devoted to molecular modeling.