Veglia Laboratory (5-256 Nils Hasselmo Hall)
The Veglia laboratory occupies ~2500 square feet and is fully equipped for cell culture, protein purification, peptide synthesis, and NMR sample preparations. Major lab equipment includes: CEM Liberty Blue Peptide Synthesis system; J20-XP Beckman centrifuge; Allegra X-30R Beckman centrifuge; Agilent 1100 series HPLC system; Beckman System Gold HPLC; Revco -20°C Legaci freezer; Thermo Forma -86°C freezer; four refrigerators; three benchtop shakers; laminar flow hood; New Brunswick fermentor; two Akta FPLC systems; one 500 series FPLC system; SpectraMax microplate reader; gel imager for imaging protein and DNA gels; Bio-Rad iCycler Thermal Cycle PCR machine; two Eppendorf PCR Machines; BUCHI Rotavapor R-100; Labconco FreeZone 2.5; and a TA Instruments NanoITC. A major advantage of this location is access to the core facilities of the Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics Department. The core facilities include several culture rooms equipped with incubators, shakers, a French press cell homogenizer, and fermentors, as well as three autoclaves and several cold rooms.
Computers: While several workstations in the Veglia laboratory are dedicated to molecular modeling, the majority of the calculations are carried out at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI). All of the workstations are connected to MSI via T1 network connections. In addition, a 20-workstation microcomputer network is located in the Basic Science Computing Laboratory, a facility operated in our building by MSI. Several high-end visual graphic stations are available with no reservation needed. This is accessible free of charge to all biophysics researchers. This facility is licensed for the most common programs for molecular modeling and molecular dynamics simulations. A full-time technical support manager is available for students and faculty for training in both software and hardware.
Minnesota NMR Center
Solution NMR: Two 600 MHz, two 700 MHz, one 850 MHz, and one 900 MHz NMR spectrometers. All of these spectrometers are equipped with 4 channel consoles with cryogenic probes. All available probes are listed below.
600 MHz (Spec. 6001, 6002) 700 MHz (Spec. 7001, 7002) 850 MHz (Spec. 8501)
5-mm TCI cryoprobe (2) 3.2-mm E-free MAS 5-mm TCI cryoprobe
1.3-mm Ultrafast MAS 5-mm TXI cryoprobe 5-mm TXI triple resonance 5-mm TXI triple resonance (2)
5-mm BBO broadband observe 900 MHz (Spec. 9001)
1.7-mm TCI cryoprobe 5-mm TCI cryoprobe
4-mm HRMAS 5-mm TXI triple resonance
Solid-State NMR: Two Varian DD1 600 and 700 MHz (54 mm narrow bore diameter) instruments are fully operational and equipped to perform MAS and oriented solid-state NMR experiments. The Direct DigitalTM receiver has an analog-to-digital conversion rate of 80 MHz. The spectrometer has three PTS frequency synthesizers: high band for 1H or 19F, and two channels that can each generate frequencies ranging from 10-320 MHz. Each channel has a high-power amplifier that is able to output 1000, 800, and 1000 W for the high, mid, and low-band channels, respectively.
These systems are equipped with six solid-state NMR probes; all are low-E with the exception of the 4.0mm T3 probe.
(1) 1H/31P-13C/13C-15N 3.2mm Varian HXY BioMAS
(2) 1H/31P-13C/13C-15N 4.0mm Varian HXY T3 MAS
(3) 1H/31P-14N Varian HX BioStatic rectangular coil for glass plates (300 μL)
(4) 1H/31P-13C/13C-15N Varian HXY BiCell round coil for bicelles (120 μL)
(5) 1H/15N MagLab (Tallahassee, FL) HN rectangular coil for glass plate samples (300 μL)
(6) 1H/15N MagLab HX round coil for bicelles (120 μL)
(7) 1H/13C/15N 3.2mm Varian HXY, optimized for 13C detection (Supplement, GM072701-08S1)
The MAS rate can be adjusted up to 15 kHz (thin-walled 36 μL rotor) or 25 kHz (thick-walled 22 μL rotor) for the 3.2mm bioMAS probe and up to 18 kHz for the 4.0 mm T3 probe. Temperature of each experiment can be adjusted from +100°C to -40°C. The spectrometer is connected to a Dell PC that runs VnmrJ software version 2.2C. A four-channel 1GHz Tektronix (model DPO 4104) digital oscilloscope is also dedicated to the spectrometer in order to monitor forward and reflected power throughout the course of the experiments. In addition, the hybrid Bruker Avance III 700 MHz and Avance III-NEO 600 MHz instruments have solid-state NMR capabilities with 1000, 1000, and 500 W RF amplifiers respectively for 1H, 13C, and 15N channels. This spectrometer is equipped with following probes.
(1) 1H-13C-15N 3.2 mm E-free MAS triple resonance probe with 25 µl sample volume, and up to 20 kHz MAS spinning.
(2) 1H-13C HR-MAS probe with 50 µl sample volume, and up to 12 kHz spinning.
(3) 1.3-mm Ultrafast MAS capable of up to 111-kHz spinning.
Biophysical Technology Center
The Biophysical Technology Center (BTC) provides spectroscopy and EPR resources for researchers both on and off campus.