The Laboratory

The Petsko/Ringe Laboratory consists of 5,000 square feet of recently constructed space on the 6th floor of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis University. The two research groups have been assigned 1,500 square feet of wet lab space, with an additional 2,000 square feet of space for common equipment such as X-ray generators, X-ray detectors and computer graphics workstations.

The Wet Lab
The wet lab comprises a number bays with benches and desks for personnel, two cold rooms, a dark room, and separate rooms for working with radioactive materials. The wet lab is well equipped for protein purification with chromatography equipment, a Pharmacia FPLC system (left), micro-centrifuges, and electrophoresis equipment. There are several refrigerators and -20°C freezers for sample storage and two incubators and a large shaker for bacterial and yeast growth. There is a shared room for crystal growth and mounting (right), a room for X-ray instrument control, cryotesting and storage of samples in liquid nitrogen. There is also dedicated space in one of the cold rooms for crystallization at 4°C. In addition, some space in the wet lab has been set aside for synthetic organic chemistry and has been equipped with a fume hood, rotary evaporator, and an HPLC system with diode array detector. The wet lab also includes a small yeast genetics laboratory with access to microscopes, a tetrad dissection apparatus, a PCR machine and facilities for storing strains and plasmids. We share with two other labs in the Center a media preparation facility, plate pouring service, and glassware sterilization service. We have access to the Brandeis University facility for DNA synthesis and sequencing, as well as a mass spectrometry laboratory with both MALDI-TOF and electrospray intruments.

Computational Facilities
Computing resources necessary for all aspects of protein crystal structure solution and refinement are available to the Petsko/Ringe Laboratory. Additionally, computers and peripherals are available for general use and for creation of computer generated artwork and graphics and preparation of manuscripts and poster presentations. The Rosenstiel Center's computing resources are tied together by a 100 Mbit local area network which provides access to the Brandeis network, the commercial Internet and Internet2.

X-ray Facilities
The lab's X-ray suite is divided into two bays, each of which accommodates an X-ray generator and two area detectors, separated by a room that provides space for sample preparation, sample storage and cryotesting, as well as the computers and electronic gear that control the detectors. The first X-ray bay houses a Rigaku RU200B rotating anode X-ray generator with normal focus (0.5mm) that typically runs at 10KW. A Rigaku RAXIS-IIC (left) image plate detector and a Siemens X-100 multiwire area detector are mounted on the RU200B's two X-ray ports. Diffraction data can be collected at both 4°C and -180°C using in-house equipment. The second X-ray bay houses a Rigaku RU300B rotating anode generator capable of producing one of two fine focus beams (0.1mm and 0.3mm) while operating at maximum power. A Rigaku RAXIS-IV (right) image plate detector is mounted on the RU300B. This instrument is shared with Carolyn Cohen's Lab. An MSC X-stream device provides cooling for diffraction experiments at 4°C and -180°C. A home-built CCD detector is currently under development on the RU300B generator's second port.