Core Facilites
The Neuroscience Center Core Facilities were established to enable UNC neuroscientists to generate mouse genetic models for studies of neurological disease mechanisms, perform state of the art imaging and bioinformatics analysis on these models, and finally to develop assays that can be used to advance new treatments for neurological diseases. These facilities were established with support from a NINDS core grant and contain three cores:
The Microscopy Core provides training and support for advanced imaging methodologies for analysis of the disease models. This Core has state of the art Zeiss, Nikon, Leica, and Olympus Imaging systems for confocal, time-lapse confocal, color, and widefield analysis of living and fixed tissue preparations. Bioinformatics Core provides access to Bioinformatics, which is rapidly emerging as a critical need for NINDS-funded and other UNC neuroscientists. The Bioinformatics Core provides state of the art pathway analysis, analysis of transcriptional mechanisms(ChIP-seq, RNA-seq), and epigenetic analysis. Bioinformatics will enable NINDS funded and other neuroscientists to interrogate mechanisms in disease models and determine global consequences of manipulating signaling components. BRAIN Initiative Viral Vector Core (BIVVC) provides full spectrum support for the production and use of viral tools in neuroscience applications. Viral Tools provides adeno-associated virus, rabies virus and lenti virus vectors tailored to specific investigator needs including experimental consultation, vector design, and virus production. BIVVC also refines and develops new viral tools to address experimental tool gaps in the field of neuroscience.