General Information

The work of the General Services Unit focuses on assisting users by carrying out basic but essential laboratory tasks, allowing significant time savings for researchers. The activities to be carried out include washing and sterilisation services, waste management, media preparation, control and maintenance of common equipment and nucleic acid extraction.

The extraction of nucleic acids is the fundamental basis of most molecular biology studies and of all DNA and RNA recombination techniques. The quality and purity of these nucleic acids are two of the most important elements in such analysis using the appropriate extraction methods for each type of system.

Members
Scientific Responsible
Technical Responsible
Research support technicians
Service Portfolio
Nucleic acid extraction
  • Automated extraction QIAcube (QIAGEN).
    • DNA extraction of tissues in paraffin
    • DNA extraction of whole blood
    • DNA extraction of saliva
    • DNA extraction of tissue/cells
    • DNA extraction of cells
    • DNA extraction of small volume samples
    • RNA extraction of bone
    • DNA extraction of the microbiome
    • DNA extraction of bacteria
    • DNA extraction of faeces
  • Manual extraction
    • Saline extraction (swab, cells and tissue)
    • DNA extraction plants/fungi
    • RNA purification cells
    • Quality and integrity of nucleic acids (Absorbance, fluorimetry and electrophoresis)
Quality and integrity of nucleic acids
  • Quantification by absorbance using NanoDrop2000C (ThermoScientific).
  • Quantification by fluorimetry using Qubit (LifeTechnologies).
  • Visualisation of bands by electrophoresis
Standardisation of samples once extracted, for subsequent use in the Genomics Unit.
Washing and sterilisation service
Culture media and solution preparation service
Waste management service
Equipment
Nucleic acid extraction robot
  • Equipment: 3 QIAcube (QIAGEN) and MaxWell (Promega)
  • Features: The systems are based on technology using filtration columns and magnetic beads for the extraction of genetic material from different types of samples.
Photodocumentation and plate reader
  • Equipment: LAS4000 (GH Healthcare), BioDoc-It (VPN) and M200 Nanoquant Pro (Tecan)
  • Features: allow the development of gel or membrane samples by chemiluminescence, fluorescence and transluminescence. The plate reader is prepared for absorbance and fluorescence reading.
Ultracentrifuges
  • Equipment: Sorvall WX100 (Thermo Scientific) and Sorvall RC-6PLUS (Thermo Fisher)
  • Characteristics: High performance centrifuges allowing centrifugation of samples at speeds up to 100,000g, for the separation of small particles.
Other equipment
  • Equipment: DNA and RNA quantification (Bioanalyzer 2100 and NanoDrop 2000c-Thermo Fisher), incubators (Ecotron-Infors HT and Innova 44R-Eppendorf), laminar flow and gas cabinets (AV3070-Telstar and SCALA1925-Waldner), autoclaves (Autester ST DRY PV-II 75-Selecta), thermodisinfectors (G7883-Miele), deep freezers (Thermo Fisher) and small equipment (centrifuges, vortex, thermoblocks, etc.). ).
  • Characteristics: Basic and necessary equipment to work in a correct and standardised way in the laboratory.