Affymetrix Core Facility

About Us

The University of Tennessee Affymetrix Core Facility is a user fee facility catering to in house and local users. The Core is supported by the following:

• Center for Environmental Biotechnology
• College of Arts and Sciences
• College of Education, Health and Human Sciences
• Department of Animal Science
• Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology
• Department of Microbiology
• Department of Nutrition
• Division of Biology
• Office of Research
• TN Agricultural Experiment Station
• UT-ORNL Graduate School of Genome Science and Technology
• UT-ORNL Science Alliance

GeneChips

The UT Affymetrix Core can run 3' IVT, Whole Transcript Gene 1.0 ST, EXON, Tiling and SNP arrays. Using Affymetrix Gene Expression GeneChips, investigators are able to examine differential gene expression in a wide variety of cell types and tissues. There are currently over a dozen types of GeneChips available including Yeast, Human, Rat, Mice. Affymetrix has several plant species including Arabidopsis, Soybean, Rice, Poplar, and Wheat. Other GeneChips used at UTK are Bovine, Canine, Porcine, and Zebrafish. Affymetrix has a couple of microbial species available, and we have access to LBL Phylochips for microbial community analysis. Persons interested in running Nimblegen Microbial Arrays should contact UTIA Genomics Hub. Investigators at the University of Tennessee have used GeneChips to study obesity and lipid metabolism, environmental toxins, and various cancers.

The Affy Core has the latest Affymetrix Gene Chip Instrumentation including a Gene Chip 640 Hybridization Oven, a Gene chip 450 Fluidics Station and a GeneChip 7G Scanner. The Facility also has an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer to assess quality. The Core has a Nanodrop Spectrophotometer for the most accurate quantification of small amounts of RNA.

454 Sequencing

Starting in Spring 2009, we began performing high throughput sequencing using a Roche 454 Genome FLX System, located at ORNL's Joint Institute for Biological Sciences. Contact Alice Layton for pricing and design.

Capillary Sequencing

Capillary Sequencing is available through the Biology Division's Sequencing Lab. Please contact Joe May at 865-974-6231 for details.

People

The Affymetrix Core Facility Director is Julia Gouffon. She has her Masters Degree in Microbiology and fifteen years of technical experience at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Executive Director is Dr. Jay Whelan, Head of the Nutrition department.