Facilities and Instrumentation

My laboratories occupy 850 square feet in the North Mudd building of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. The labs consist of two rooms, both newly renovated in 2003. The chemistry lab is equipped for routine organic chemistry, including three 8-foot fume hoods, a Mars Express microwave-assisted solvent extraction system, TurboVap LV, homemade N2 blowdown system for GC vials, benchtop centrifuge, Labconco dishwasher, IEC HN-II centrifuge, and large-volume muffle oven. The instrument lab houses several gas chromatography and mass spectrometry systems: a ThermoFinnigan Trace GC - DSQ quadrupole mass spectrometer for identifying and quantifying organic compounds; a TraceGC - Delta+XP isotope-ratio mass spectrometer for measuring 2H and 13C in individual organic compounds; a Delta-S isotope ratio mass spectrometer with Costech elemental analyzer for measuring 13C and 15N in bulk materials; a standalone Agilent 6890 GC/FID for sample quantitation and screening; and a Los-Gatos DLT-100 Liquid Water Isotope Analyzer for measure 18O and 2H in liquid water samples. The new Spooling-Wire Microcombustion (SWiM) interface and a Virtis freeze dryer are also housed here.

Numerous other facilities are available within the Geological & Planetary Sciences Division, including:

• Two state-of-the-art Ion Microprobe Instruments (Cameca NanoSIMS 50L and Cameca IMS 7f-Geo) housed in the Center for Microanalysis.
• Instrument fabrication and electronics shops, including CNC mills and lathes, surface grinding, and PC board fabrication.
• LEO 1550 VP Scanning Electron Microscope (Division facility)
• Jeol JXA-733 Electron Microprobe (Division facility)
• Delta+XL IRMS used for D/H analyses of nanogram quantities of H2 and H2O (Eiler lab)
• Element and Neptune ICP-MS instruments used for trace-element and isotopic abundance analysis of solutions
• 2 manual Zeiss epifluorescent microscopes (inverted and upright) that share a Metamorph image acquisition system (Newman lab)
• cold room equipped with ÄKTA FPLC for anaerobic protein purification (Newman lab)
• routine equipment for molecular biology (including Beckman ulta-centrifuge, Eppendorf PCR machine, power supplies and boxes for gel electrophoresis, tabletop centrifuges, analytical balances, etc.) is available in the Newman lab.

Beyond the division, there are many analytical resources here at Caltech, including:

• The Keck Environmental Analysis Laboratory provides numerous capabilities for analysis of organic materials in environmental samples. Facilities include 5 gas chromatography systems with FID, ECD, quadrupole MS, and ion trap MS detectors, two HPLC systems with diode-array and ESI/API mass spectrometer detectors, ion chromatography, and ICP/MS.
• The Caltech Flow Cytometry Facility houses four instruments, two configured for sorting cells at >3000 cells/sec (Becton Dickinson FACS Vantage, and Coulter Epics Elite) and two configured for counting. The FACS Vantage instrument is equipped with two lasers, a Coherent Enterprises Argon laser with UV beam output in parallel with a 488 nm beam , and a Coherent Spectrum Argon/Krypton mixed gas laser with any Ar or Kr wavelength output. It is capable of 5-color analysis and sorting, and is equipped with a robotic arm for sorting into a 96-well plate format. The facility has dedicated staff to maintain and run all instruments.
• The Mass Spectrometry Resource Center in the Beckman Institute at Caltech houses an external ion source high-field Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometer equipped with fast ion bombardment (FAB), matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI), and electrospray ionization (ESI) sources. Additional instruments include a quadrupole MS equipped with an ESI ion source, a reflection time of flight MS equipped with a MALDI source, and an ion mobility spectrometer. A near field scanning molecular microprobe has been assembled to map molecules on surfaces with submicron resolution.
• The Biopolymer Synthesis and Analysis Facility is able to synthesize DNA, antisense-DNA and RNA (mixed probes, "doped" and biotinylated nucleotides), and polypeptides. It also has an automated nucleic acid extractor (for high quality purified DNA preparations), two automated peptide synthesizers, and various protein microsequencers.
• The mission of the Biological Imaging Center is to develop new technologies for the imaging of biological structure and function. Techniques in use or under development include: video microscopy (both low light level and high-resolution), calcium (radiometric indicator dyes) imaging, confocal microscopy, two-photon microscopy and magnetic resonance microscopy. In addition, the BIC provides facilities for the processing and analysis of imaging data, ranging from a Silicon Graphics workstation for volume rendering to high resolution output devices.
• The Beckman Institute contains many other analytical resources that are too numerous to describe here.