Third floor, Pathology / Microbiology Building, Old Mulago Hill Road +256 414 541 830

Molecular Biology Laboratory

The Molecular Biology Laboratory was originally established with support from NIH and SIDA (Sweden). It is approx. 800 sq. ft., air conditioned well equipped and appropriately organized for most molecular biology-oriented studies. The facility recently acquired an additional 2500 sq. ft. space—including offices and a teleconferencing room—that currently houses the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, as well as a State-of-the-art Sequencing facility. The laboratory is well equipped with two incubator shakers (Innova 3100), Waterbath shaker (Innova), incubator (TwinCubator for Hybridization), Hybridization oven (Labnet), Six (6) refrigerators, Microcentrifuge (Eppendorf), belly dancer shaker (Stovall), Electroporator (BioRad), Two (2) Conventional Thermocyclers (One from Biorad, two from Applied Biosystems), Four horizontal gel electrophoresis systems (ThermoFisher Scientific), two UV transilluminators, a polaroid camera (UVP) gel documentation system (BioDoc-It), a blotting apparatus, incubator (Binder), pH meter (Oakton), analytical balance (Sartorius), two autoclaves, an ice maker, sterilizing hood (Cleanspot), UV crosslinker (Spectrolinker), spectrophotometers (GeneQuant, Cecil, Janeway 3605), Three Laminar flow work stations, five internet linked computers, and a dark room. Software are installed and operational including the Bionumerics for molecular analyses. This laboratory performs most basic, applied and molecular epidemiology techniques. Freezing space – currently we have two -80ºC freezers—both chest and upright with capacity to hold 50,400 and 30,000 samples (in 1.5 - 2mL cryovials) respectively for temporary storage. We have two -20ºC freezers—both chest and upright with capacity to hold up to 23,300 and 22,600 samples (in 1.5 - 2mL cryovials) respectively. There are 50,000 samples stored in the freezer space. These are mainly samples generated from our studies or referred for further testing. The molecular biology laboratory stores about 5000 samples a year. Two laboratory information systems; Baobab and freezer works, are used to keep records on the archival, storage and retrieval of the stored samples. All equipment is under a renewable annual service contract and are serviced according to schedule.

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