Facilities and Equipment

Facilities

The Wyss Institute's Longwood facility is located at 3 Blackfan St, Boston, MA.

The Wyss Institute's operations are located on the 2nd and 5th floors (82,000 sq. ft.) in the Center for Life Science Boston Building, which is in close proximity to Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women's Hospital. The Institute also has a 13,000 sq. ft. facility adjacent to the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Cambridge. The space integrates the state-of-the-art equipment and facilities required for successful completion of the diverse research and technology development activities taking place at the Institute.

Laboratories and Equipment

Both Longwood and Cambridge facilities feature state-of-the-art laboratory space and equipment.

The facilities include two dedicated BL2 laboratories for bacteria; five tissue culture rooms for mammalian cells; a BL2+ facility for primary human cell isolations from tissue biopsies under sterile and controlled conditions; cold/warm rooms; dedicated general equipment rooms; dedicated facilities for dishwashing, sterilizing glassware, and media preparation; and separate microscopy rooms. In addition to the more standard capabilities, such as high-speed centrifuges, floor shaker incubators, hybridization ovens, freezers, particle counters, microscopes, and chemical hoods, the Institute's facilities include a Bio-Plex 3D multiplex array system with 96- and 384-well plate capability, an Agilent Velocity 11 Bravo liquid handling system, quantitative real-time PCR detection systems, a Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering instrument (MAGE) that can speed up evolutionary rates, and four open-source Polonators for high-throughput sequencing. The Institute also maintains state-of-the-art materials characterization and imaging capabilities that are organized as Cores, providing access to users on an hourly fee basis. These are described below.

Polonators are the next generation DNA sequencing technology. Two of the Institute's four Polonators are pictured here.

Wyss Imaging Core -- The Institute maintains a state-of-the-art imaging core facility with the following capabilities: electron microscopy (a JEOL JEM-1400 TEM and a fully integrated Tescan/Bruker VPSEM/EDX), a Leica TIRF, three Zeiss Axio Observer Z1 for live cell imaging, a Nikon NSTORM, a Leica SP5 X multispectral-multiphoton inverted confocal system with white light laser and HyD detectors, an upright Zeiss 710LSM confocal and an inverted Zeiss 710LSM confocal with TIRF combo system. Two high power workstations with Bitplane Imaris 7.5 software are available for 3D/4D image analysis. A BD LSRFortessa flow cytometer with High Throughput Sampler and a Caliper IVIS Spectrum for in vivo, small animal imaging are also part of the core.

Wyss Materials Characterization Core -- The Institute maintains a state-of-the-art materials characterization core facility with the following capabilities: gas chromatography (Agilent 6890 GC with ALS and head space, Agilent 5975/7890 GC-MS with headspace); gel permeation chromatography (Malvern Viscotek GPC Max Tetra Detector, Malvern Viscotek GPC 270 Detector); liquid chromatography (several Agilent 1200 HPLC with rapid resolution, Agilent 1290 Infinity UPLC/6140 EZ access system for LC-MS); spectroscopy (R200-L SENTERRA Raman Microscope, Vertex 70 FTIR spectrometer with a Bruker HYPERION 3000 Infrared Microscope); spectrophotometer (Agilent UV-Vis 8453 and Agilent Cary 300 UV-Vis); particle size analyzer (two Malvern zen3600 particle size analyzer that can detect 0.6nm to 6 um using NIBS technology and Dynamic Light Scattering); an Agilent G200 nanoindenter; a TA Instruments AR-G2 rheometer to characterize material properties over a broad range of stress, strain and shear stress; two Veeco Multimode AFM microscopes; and an Agilent 5500 AFM configured with the environmental chamber.

Engineering

The Wyss machine shop includes state of the art capabilities for 3D prototyping from the mini to the macro scale.

In addition to protein biochemistry, molecular, and cell biology facilities, the Wyss Institute is equipped with engineering facilities to support work on medical devices, biologically inspired architecture, microfluidic research systems, and other projects at the interface of biology and engineering.

Wyss Machine Shop / 3D Prototyping Core -- The Wyss Institute Machine Shop / 3D prototyping Core integrates a unique set of capabilities created to support the engineering needs of all Institute platforms. The Core has three full time machinists with experience in both industrial and academic machine shops, creating prototypes for varied applications. In addition to fabrication, these experts help researchers during the design phase, enabling development from a simple concept into real prototypes.

Specific engineering resources include a Microlution 5100-S CNC 5-axis micromilling machine, a CNC HAAS MM2 3-axis mini mill, a CNC HAAS VF-2YT, a HAAS TL-1 Lathe (manual and CNC), an Omax 2626 LXP water jet cutter, a Sodick AG40L RAM EDM machine that enables prototyping of micro molds with high precision, an Objet Connex 500 3D printer and a Fortus 400mc 3D printer, a Epilog 36-EXT laser-cutter, a Laserstar Fiberstar 7500 laser welder, an engineering stockroom, soldering stations, prototyping and diagnostic tools (e.g. oscilloscopes), a logic analyzer for examining high-speed digital output, and molding capabilities including an oven suitable for composites, plastics, and silicon.

Computers and Software

Service and desktop user support services, core IT services (such as storage, data backup and security), and computer services (such as high-performance computing and applications, website and infrastructure servers) are administered by the Harvard Medical School. If needed, supercomputing capabilities (Blue Gene) are available through Harvard University. A number of CAD and simulation software packages are also available at all Institute sites, including ComSol, Solidworks, Labview, Maya, Matlab, Pro-Engineer, ANSYS, SmartCam, and Autocad.

Office

The facilities contain office areas for faculty, as well as meeting and conference rooms to foster research collaboration. The Institute also provides administrative and grant support staff.