Facilites At MVL

We maintain an excellent Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) cell culture facility here. We isolate, propagate, characterise and maintain various alphaviruses in BHK-21 and Vero Cell lines. We have excellent facilities for performing various antiviral assays including Plaque Inhibition Assay, Immunofluorescence Assay, Plaque Purification Assay, CPE and Cell Cytotoxicity assays including MTT Assay and LDH assay. We have high capacity Galaxy 170S CO2 incubator with superior quality performance that helps in maintaining sensitive cell lines.

We also have the capillary electrophoresis facility which rarely available in CFTI labs in India It has broad ranged applications including separation of analytes ranging from small molecules to biomolecules like nucleic acids and proteins. The most remarkable property of the technique is its high resolving power as it can differentiate nucleic acid with even single nucleotide difference.

We here try to maintain best technologies for better research quality which include the advance fluorescence microscope with phase-contrast, time-lapse and live-cell imaging technique which is also equipped with an onstage incubator. It has an environmental chamber that enables precise control of temperature, humidity and three gases for time lapse imaging of cells under both physiological and non-physiological conditions. This helps us in maintaining cells microenvironment even during imaging so that it can be used in further experiments.

We also maintain excellent routine cell-imaging facility. The inverted microscope we maintain is one of its kind with high range of contrast techniques including Bright Field, Phase Contrast, Plas Differential Interference Contrast, improved Hoffman Modulation Contrast (iHMC) and even Fluorescence Contrast. Also, the microscope has cell imaging facility which makes monitoring and documentation of various cellular experiments easy.

We have AKTA prime facility which is a fast performance liquid chromatography system which is often used to analyse and purify mixture of proteins. A wide variety of columns could be used with the instrument that can separate molecules based on size, charge distribution (ion-exchange), hydrophobicity, reverse-phase, affinity etc.

Along with the cell culture facility we here maintain electroporation facility which is a microbiology technique in which electric field is used to increase cell permeability that allows chemicals, drugs and DNA to be introduced in cells. It is an important technique we use to develop replicons and recombinant DNA and introducing them in cells.

In our lab we harbor two Centrifuge units having two different size rotors for 15- and 50-mL tubes with maximum speed of 12,000 rpm. We also have a mini centrifuge for micro centrifuge Tubes and adaptors for PCR tubes having maximum speed of 13400 rpm. Our lab is also using high speed ultra centrifuge which generates acceleration of 1 000 000 g.

We are well equipped with BOD and CO2 incubators as well as orbital shakers with superior quality performance. These instruments help in maintaining an optimum temperature, humidity and rotation speed for growth of bacterial and sensitive cell lines. Cells are nourished in suspension and adherent culture conditions.

Our lab is studded with high speed workstation for discovery of novel antiviral molecules against alphavirus and flaviviruses. We are also screening different compound libraries to find out their affinity with existing protein structure.

Our department will be equipped with BSL 3 facility soon. This facility is appropriate to work with propagation and cultivation of clinical viral which can cause serious illness through inhalation.