Support Core - Tissue Analysis Core
Core leader: Paul S. Cooke, Ph.D.
Co-leader: Martin J. Cohn, Ph.D.
The focus of this application is endocrine disrupting chemicals, their mechanisms of action, and the effects that they may have on animal and human health. The Tissue Analysis Core (Core A) will provide an array of services to five of the six individual research projects that make up this application, and so will be critical for achieving the scientific aims of this application. Core A will offer histology for routine and specialized microscopy, as well as facilities for morphometric analysis and image capture of histological data. The Core will also offer quantitative real-time PCR (Q-PCR) analysis, immunohistochemistry (IHC) and in situ hybridization. Finally, the Core will also offer enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) for a group of estrogens and androgens that will be critical for our focus on endocrine disruption. For all services, the users will be able to store their data in the Core laboratory, if desired. The Core is fully equipped for all of the services that will be offered. Both the Director and Co-director have extensive experience in all facets of these techniques as a result of using these methodologies in their own research and prior experience with running Core laboratories (Cooke). Importantly, the Director and Co-director have special expertise in in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry that will allow them to develop these methodologies for analyzing new proteins of interest as well as doing routine work with proteins that have previously been analyzed by these techniques. The Core will allow these methodologies, which play major roles in the research of the projects that will utilize the Core, to be done economically and reproducibly across the projects, which will facilitate sharing and comparison of data across projects. Furthermore, the individual laboratories that will utilize these services will be able to take full advantage of the power of all of these methodologies without needing to possess either the equipment or technical expertise needed to effectively perform these techniques. One unique aspect of this application is that two of five projects involve fish, whose specialized biology presents unique challenges to effectively performing some of the Core methodologies. The Co-director has extensive experience in this specialized area, and has published extensively using Q-PCR, in situ hybridization and IHC in fish. Thus, the Core is well prepared to address some of the unique needs of two of the component projects as well as provide an array of other critical services to the component projects.
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