Research Facilities

The Department of Physiology and Biophysics is well equipped with major research instrumentation for physiological, metabolic, and biochemical studies, including scintillation counters for radioisotope work, ultracentrifuges, amino acid analyzers, a gas-phase protein sequencer, DNA synthesizer, DNA sequencer, and instrumentation for measuring ORD and CD, plus a wide variety of chromatographic, electrophoretic, spectrophotometric, and electronic equipment. Also available are a peptide synthesizer, mass spectrometer, and laboratory for chemical synthesis of low-molecular-weight compounds. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instrumentation is available through collaboration with other departments. Tissue culture services, including monoclonal antibody production, are also available. Specialized equipment used in studies of membrane physiology and biophysics (e.g., membrane potentials and patch-clamp studies on ion channels) are in routine use in several faculty laboratories. Department faculty members are associated with a Health Sciences Center diabetes and metabolism group and have collaborative arrangements with other basic science and clinical departments. Many of the facilities are located within the Basic Science Tower of Stony Brook’s Health Sciences Center, the home base of the department.

Molecular Biology Core
The molecular biology core was established to provide students and faculty ready access to DNA/RNA recombinant technology. Departmental facilities now include a 37-degree environmental room, large orbital shakers, an array of incubators, DNA sequencing gel set ups (IBI), electrophoretic apparatus and power supplies, an IBI gel reader and a software package that permits the reading of DNA sequencing gels, a selection of restriction enzymes, and a number of cDNA expression libraries. A DNA synthesizer and an automatic DNA sequencer were recently added to this core.

Molecular Modeling
Computational molecular modeling and visualization are valuable tools for the study of signal transduction systems and protein structure/function. Some current applications of faculty affiliated with our Biophysics Program include examining the physical factors involved in protein/membrane, protein/protein, protein/DNA interactions, studying the specificity of ligand and substrate binding to enzymes, and building models of proteins using domain structures from homologous proteins. The computational facilities are state-of-the-art: a network of Silicon Graphic Indy and Indigo workstations provides fast, high-resolution, interactive graphics and a 500 Mb, eight-processor Sun supercomputer is used for intensive numerical analysis. Several members of the department have access to National Supercomputing Centers.

Computing Facilities
The department has more than 60 different computer systems, ranging from high-end PCs and Macintosh systems to UNIX-based workstations. The department maintains a computer center for general use by all students, faculty, and staff, which includes a number of high-end PCs, scanners, graphics workstations, laser and color printers, and data archival facilities. In addition, first- and second-year graduate students have exclusive use of two additional high-end PCs for word processing, data analysis, and network access. All computers are connected directly, via Ethernet, to a local area network, which in turn, is directly connected to the campus-wide network and the Internet. Thus, each computer has high-speed access to a number of file and print servers, campus mainframes, library systems for catalog and literature searches, campus administrative systems, and, via the Internet, the World Wide Web and NSF-sponsored supercomputer facilities.

Biophysics Program Research Facilities
All of the faculty have independent research programs and well-equipped laboratories to carry out these programs. There are major shared facilities for X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, electron microscopy, molecular modeling, and molecular biology at Stony Brook and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In addition, Brookhaven National Laboratory offers unique possibilities employing synchrotron radiation and neutron diffraction.

 

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