Core Facilities at the IGB is your resource for biological microscopy and image analysis. Our facilities are conveniently located, and we provide a variety of services to both IGB researchers and others in the campus community. Our facility is meant to encourage innovation – try new techniques and approaches to achieving your research goals without a significant investment in instrumentation or time.

We offer:

• High-end equipment
• User training
• Ongoing support, including experiment design and data interpretation
• Twenty-four hour access

IGB Core Facilities is located on the concourse level of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mission

The Core Facilities at the IGB is a state-of-the-art resource for biological microscopy and image analysis. The core mission of the facility is to provide IGB faculty, as well as faculty from across campus with the tools and expertise to meet their imaging goals. In addition to providing technical assistance in acquiring and analyzing microscopy images the staff is also able to aid in designing and interpreting experiments. Check out this video to find out more about the Core Facilities.

Education and Training

The Core Facilities train over one hundred new users a year on one or more instruments and are co-hosting a bioimaging camp for middle school girls with GAMES.

Our new user procedures form guides new users through the training process.  To request training (theory training is required for most microscopes including LSM 700, LSM 710, Apotome, SR-SIM, before the hands-on training), please fill out our training request form.  Users have access to IGB disk space through the IGB computer and network resources group to transfer data. To request access to the IGB building, please fill out the IGB Entry Request Form.

Training pages can be found here.

Collaboration

In addition to the typical fee for training and instrument time, collaborations with the core facilities staff can be beneficial in the development of unique methods or capabilities.  Publications containing work performed in the core facilities should use these guidelines for acknowledging the core facilities. Download a copy of our brochure.

The IGB Core cooperates with the following facilities on campus to provide an extensive selection of instrumentation to campus researchers:

Beckman ITG

Materials Research Laboratory

Molecular and Cellular Biology

Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center

• Cytometry and Microscopy to Omics

• DNA Services

BioNanotechnology Laboratory

A list of additional facilities can be found here.

The Illinois Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center (CBC) and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) have partnered to establish an integrated suite of next generation instrumentation that is now available for users to conduct cutting-edge Omics analyses within the three-dimensional (3D) structural, compositional and formational history of any given sample. Samples can be composed of: (1) exclusively tissues and cells; (2) a combination of tissues and cells with biomineral deposits (e.g., bones, teeth, ectopic calcification); and/or (3) exclusively biomineral deposits. This new analytical pipeline begins in the IGB Core Facility, with 3D micro-CT x-ray structural scans of entire small-to-large samples at a resolution of 3-100 microns (depending on sample size, shape and composition), coupled with micron-scale Raman characterization of the mineralogical composition of embedded biomineral deposits. High-quality histology sections and petrographic thin sections can be strategically prepared and further interrogated using the suite of other cutting-edge optical and electron microscopes available within the IGB Core Facility. Analysis of these samples can then continue with the coordinated efforts of the DNA Services, Cytometry and Microscopy to Omics (CMtO), and High Performance Computing Bioinformatics (HPCBio) facilities within the CBC, which creates a unique opportunity to conduct: (1) cell cytometry analysis and sorting; (2) 10X Genomics Visium CytAssist spatial transcriptomics and proteomics from total mRNA within original 3D tissue and biomineral structure (bridging histology and genomics); and (3) 10X Genomics Chromium high-throughput or deep single cell RNA-Seq. The specific suite of applicable microscopy and omics analyses will depend on sample type, composition and preservation, as well as project goals and budgetary constraints. Users who wish to use these integrated analytical facilities can begin by arranging a consultation session with the IGB and CBC Lab Directors identified on the websites listed above.