Microbiome Core Facility
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Our Mission
The human body is the home to approximately 10,000,000,000 bacterial cells that inhabit our gastrointestinal tract, mouth, urogenital tract, and even our skin. Most of these bacteria are uncultivable, which meant in the past that researchers were unable to study and characterize them. The development of metagenomic technologies allow us today to examine microbial communities trough techniques like amplicon sequencing, Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (TRFLP), Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (q-PCR.
The activities and research program of the Microbiome Core Facility will impact our understanding of the human-associated microbiota and its role in diseases profoundly affecting our society today, including Crohn's disease, colorectal cancer, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes, and will be directly translated into better patient care and prevention programs.
The mission of the Microbiome Core Facility is to provide the research community of the UNC- School of Medicine and the state of North Carolina with the facilities and the know-how to characterize complex microbial communities in a variety of environments.
Resources available in the Core include:
Applied Biosystems ABI 3130xl Genetic Analyzer
Qiagen BioRobot Universal System 
Genetix QPix2 XT Colony Picker System
Applied Biosystems Real-Time PCR System
Roche Genome Sequencer FLX System
Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine