Centre for Genome Biology
The Centre for Genome Biology is hosted by the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences (BiGeA) of the University of Bologna (Italy) and provides instruments and facilities to support sampling campaigns for the collection of biological samples (e.g. blood, saliva, buccal swabs, etc.), procedures for DNA/RNA isolation and purification, as well as the creation and maintenance of related biobanks. A pre-PCR room is specifically dedicated to these purposes and is equipped with:
- Laminar flow hood
- 5 freezing cabinets
- 2 refrigerators
- Bench-top centrifuge (Eppendorf)
- Spectrophotometer (GeneQuant)
A separate room is instead dedicated to DNA samples preparation for high-throughput genotyping experiments by means of SNP arrays and to the construction of molecular libraries to be submitted to massive parallel sequencing. For these purposes, the following instruments are available:
- Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies)
- StepOnePlus Real-Time PCR System (Life Technologies)
- Qubit® 3.0 fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
- GENEAMP 2720 Thermal Cycler (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
- E-Gel SizeSelect (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
- Well plate refrigerated centrifuge (Eppendorf )
- Compact centrifuge (VWR)
- Sonicator 40 (VWR)
- DYNAMAG-2 magnetic rack (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
A High Perfomance Computing unit is dedicated to the processing and storing of the generated genomic/epigenomic data. This encompasses a total of 80 processors for 500 GB of RAM and 38 TB of storage capacity distributed in:
- 2 Dell servers
- QNAP NAS system