Molecular Analytics Core Information for Grant Writers

The MUSC Molecular Analytics Core (directed by Dr. Jeremy Barth) is located in the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology on the sixth floor of the Basic Science Building (BSB) in room 633 (500 sq. ft.) The Molecular Analytics Core is an integrated resource supported intramurally through MUSC's Office of the Provost and extramurally through the SC IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence program. The core provides limited molecular services and has instrumentation that can operated by trained users. It has wet bench space and computer workstations for data analysis.

BioRad CFX96 Touch and BioRad CFX Connect quantitative PCR machines and accompanying BioRad PX1 plate sealer, a Perkin Elmer GeneAmp 9700 thermal cycler, a BioTek H1 monochromator plate reader, a Monolight 2010C luminometer, an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer, a NanoDrop One C spectrophotometer, a Sage Science BluePippin nucleic acid size selection system, two fluorometers (Thermo Fisher Qubit 2.0 and 3.0) and a Diagenode Bioruptor Ultrasonicator.

The MUSC Molecular Analytics Core has one dedicated data analysis workstation computer (HP Envy 64-bit Desktop, Intel i7-4790K quad-core processor, 2TB Hard Drive, 16Gb RAM), one PC dedicated to operation of the Agilent Bioanalyzer (HP Elite, 64-bit, Intel i5 duo-core processor, 2TB Hard Drive, 8Gb RAM), and one PC dedicated to operation of the two BioRad CFX96 qPCR instruments (64-bit). The core maintains a Network Attached Storage for secure storage and backup of 15TB of data, used primarily for long-term storage of RNA-seq fastq files. The MUSC campus data network provides 10BaseT and 100BaseT Ethernet connections over a physical layer of fiber-optic and twisted pair cabling. High-speed ATM and FDDI technologies are used to support the highest bandwidth and backbone applications. The individual campus sub-networks are administered as an Internet Class B Network, and Cisco routers provide high-speed connections between internal subnets and with the Internet via a T1 service. T1, ISDN, and dial-up PPP services are used to extend the campus network to remote locations. Web accessible subscriptions to most major scientific journals are available through the MUSC library.

The facility has a license for Partek® Flow®, a cloud-based computing platform for next generation data applications, and accessory packages for RNA-seq and scRNA-seq analysis. Partek Flow supports sequencing analysis of data from all major vendors, including Illumina, 10x Genomics, Drop-Seq, and Fluidigm. Software held from public resources includes RStudio/Bioconductor, MeV, dChip, GSEA, and Transcriptome Analysis Console 4.0.

Miscellaneous equipment: one refrigerator, two -20oC freezers, a -70oC freezer, a Labconco PCR cabinet, a Millipore Ultrapure water purification system, an Eppendorf spectrophotometer, a pH meter, several microfuges, and several agarose gel boxes and power supplies.