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DRIVE INNOVATION AND COLLABORATION
T he human mind is a brilliant thing, capable of storing decades of memo- ries, inventing entire fictional worlds, and solving some of our world’s most pressing issues. Throughout history, humans invented tools and technolo- gies that help them more easily achieve their goals and ambitions. HudsonAlpha is home to many such state-of-the-art tools to bring hypotheses to life and garner answers to complicated scientific questions. Over the past two years, HudsonAlpha added several new laboratory tools to its arsenal, thanks to private and public funding: a new cell culture suite, a confocal microscope, and a chromium controller. CELL CULTURE SUITE Cell culture is a mainstay in research labs worldwide. It allows researchers to remove cells from an animal or plant and grow them in a controlled laboratory to be used for experiments. Established cell lines are easy to study and manipulate yet share many molecular and biological processes with humans, allowing researchers to safely query the inner workings of cells without starting with a living animal or human. Information gleaned from cell lines can be translated into more complex organisms, like humans and plants.
Specialized equipment is necessary for successful cell culture. The equipment needs to maintain the appro- priate environment for the cell lines while keeping the cell culture working environment clean to avoid contamination by other biological organisms, like bacteria and fungi. At HudsonAlpha, cell culture plays an important role in much of its human health research. In March 2022, the Institute unveiled a new cell culture suite to help support these growing research programs. The new suite includes much of the specialized equipment necessary for growing
Research Associate Katie Trausch-Lowther, culturing iPSCs in the cell culture room.
HUDSONALPHA INSTITUTE FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY
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