CCAM Research Facilities
Computational Facility
The CCAM Computational Facility provides High Performance Computing support to the National Resource for Cell Analysis and Modeling, other research projects within CCAM, and for a number of research groups on the UConn Health campus. The facility holds an aggregate of >30 TFlops computing power, >400 TB storage capacity and multiple network switches capable of Terascale bandwidth. It provides High Performance Computing resources and support, as well as specialized Enterprise Computing services, to the CCAM Software Development Team, the CCAM Microscopy Facility, and to a variety of individual projects. We host multiple servers for individual lab research projects and a shared file server accessible to basic science researchers across campus. As a member of the Open Science Grid, the Computational Facility is providing resources to the national research community in addition to the significant compute and storage resources provided via NRCAM.
Microscopy Facility
Established in 1994, the CCAM Microscopy Facility provides the UCHC research community as well as other academic and industrial institutes, access to its state of the art equipment for quantitative fluorescence imaging applications. The facility now comprises ~3500 sq ft of laboratory space and includes five laser scanning confocal microscopes, two of which are combination nonlinear optical (aka 2-photon)/ laser scanning confocal/ correlation spectroscopy microscopes, one spinning disk confocal microscope and two widefield fluorescence microscopes, one equipped for total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) imaging. The equipment may be used by authorized users who have completed the required training for each piece of equipment they choose to use. Alternatively, CCAM staff are available for service work at an hourly rate. CCAM offers 25Gb of storage space to each lab with an active account.
Surface Plasmon Resonance
Concentrations of specific molecular species and kinetic constants for molecular interactions are critical to quantitative knowledge of biological systems. These values can be analyzed in vitro using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) techniques with BIACORE equipment to measure binding of a soluble molecule to its immobilized ligand. These methods allow for high resolution analysis of binding kinetics of molecular interactions. They have been used to study such interactions as RNA-protein, steroid-receptor and substrate- lipid metabolism enzymes.