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Animal Sciences Department

Animal Sciences Department

L. E. "Red" Larson Dairy Science Building

The Dairy Science Building, which adjoins the Animal Science Building, has been occupied since 1985. It contains five office suites, five postdoctorate and graduate student suites, conference room and a lounge area. A departmental darkroom is also available.

There are nine laboratories, each 960 square feet. One of the laboratories is sub-divided into a shared laboratory comprised of an iodination room, culture room, instrumentation room, tissue prep room, cold room and freezer.

In the laboratories, a full complement of equipment is available including equipment for electrophoresis and blotting, ultracentrifuges, lyophilizers, UV spectrophotometers, cell harvester, incubators, automatic microtiter plate reader, direct link to mainframe computer, scintillation and gamma isotope counters, fully automated HPLC system with software graphics, FLPC system for protein chromatography including software graphics, refrigerated centrifuges, laminar flow and sterile hoods, gas chromatographs, etc. The complement of nutrition laboratories contain standard equipment for proximate feed analyses (e.g., Kjeldahl apparatus, etc)

Three of the laboratories contain various equipment to conduct molecular biology investigations and contain: a -80°C freezer, Sorvall RC5B high speed centrifuge, Savant speed-vac system, incubators and shakers for growth of bacterial cultures, various electrophoresis units and power supplies, microcentrifuges, water baths, Polytron tissue homogenizer, Hybaid hybridization oven, spectrophotometer, thermal cycler, sonic dismembrator, drying ovens, autoclave, densitometer, fraction collectors, a water distillation device, Fotodyne photography system with a Polaroid camera for photographing slab gels, a microbiological laminar flow hood, microscope, a eukaryotic cell culture laminar flow hood and incubators for both bacteria and animal cells.

The laboratories contain IBM compatible computers which are connected to other computers via a network. Also accessible to all faculty within the department are walk-in cold rooms and small animal housing.

A surgery room is located in the adjacent Animal Science Building. Included in the surgical suite are facilities for surgeries on cattle, horses, sheep and pigs, a tissue culture room with laminar flow hoods, microscopes and incubators equipped with rocking platforms and gas sources.

The Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) is an additional support facility available to all UF faculty. At the ICBR, core laboratories for electron microscopy, monoclonal antibody production, DNA synthesis and sequencing, protein chemistry, protein expression, biological computing and transgenic animals are available.