Animal & Bioscience Department Facilities

The Animal & Bioscience Research Department has an extensive range of state of the art laboratory facilities and technical resources available to all researchers within the Department.

Genomics & Proteomics

Illumina GA II & Roche 454 GS FLX
Transcriptomics & qPCR
Chemiluminescence, fluorescence and radioisotope detection
Offgel, large-scale 2-D electrophoresis & Progenesis image analysis
FPLC, Nano LC & Mass Spectrometry

Endocrinology

Full RIA and ELISA assay suite
Fluorescent and visible plate readers
Gamma counters and data reduction software

Computational Biology

High performance 72GB RAM/node LINUX cluster
Web and database servers
Access to ICHEC supercomputers

Animal Models

Disease susceptibility – nematodes, TB, mastitis
Compensatory Growth
High & Low Fertility
Feed Efficiency – RFI, methane
Growth & carcass composition
Dairy crossbreeding

Immunology & Infectious Disease

Automated haematology & clinical analysis
Flow cytometry
ELISA processing
Tissue culture suite
Class II containment facilities
Real-Time cell-assays

Chemical Composition Analysis

Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry
High Performance Liquid Chromatography
Gas Chromatography
Near & Mid Infra-red Reflectance Spectroscopy

Large Animal Facilities

Large dairy, beef and sheep research farms
Automated animal behaviour monitoring
Individual & group feed intake monitoring
Milk quality and component analysis
Ultrasonography
Ruminal methane measurement system
Continuous culture rumen simulation system (RUSITEC)
Tissue biopsy facilities

The Animal & Bioscience Department also maintains a comprehensive biobank of DNA, tissue and clinical samples from both research and commercial herds.