National institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani Infrastructure: Library, Hostel, Labs, Gym, Auditorium & Other Facilities

Harinitha Panneerselvam

Infrastructure :- 

The Institute is being constructed on a 30-acre plot of land, with academic blocks, student and faculty housing, guest houses and a conference centre. 

The institute is presently operating from its interim facility of about 120,000 sq. ft. of floor space, constructed on the upper storey of the adjacent tuberculosis hospital, which has been rendered functional, with laboratories, equipment (including flow-cell sequencers, whole-genome genotyping and gene expression platforms, high-end computing platforms, etc.), bio-banking facility, office space and class rooms. 

DNA Sequencing & Real Time PCR

• Massively parallel sequencing platforms of GS-FLX (Roche-454), HiSeq-2000 & 2500 (Illumina), Ion Proton & Ion Torrent PGM (Life Technologies) for whole genome sequencing, exome sequencing, targeted resequencing, metagenomics, amplicon sequencing, RNA-Seq & small RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq
• ABI3500XL Genetic Analyzer (Life Technologies) for Sanger/CE sequencing and fragment analysis
• ABI7900 HT (Life Technologies) and Lightcycler LC480 (Roche) for high throughput real time PCR
• 2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent) for sequencing library QA/QC

Microarray 

• Complete laboratory set up for processing Illumina bead arrays
• Bead arrays scanned in iScan (Illumina) and the data analyzed in Genome Studio
• Genome wide genotyping, gene expression and methylation array analyses

Multiplex Suspension Array 

• Bioplex-200 suspension array platform (Bio-Rad) coupled to automated Bio-Plex ProII wash station
• System compatible with normal and magnetic beads
• Immunoassays, receptor-ligand assays, nucleic acid hybridization assays and enzyme assays
• Can detect up to 100 analytes (cytokines, growth factors etc.) in a single sample

Cell Biology 

• Tissue culture facility covering approximately 300sqft area with separate module of 100sqft "restricted-entry" sterile cell culture area: with all necessary equipment and gadgets needed for the primary culture of human tissues and maintenance of human and animal cell lines, which includes bio-safety cabinets, CO2 incubators, digital water baths, cell counters, fluorescence microscopes (both inverted and regular) with documentation system, liquid nitrogen bio-repositories, freezers, chromatography refrigerators, sonicator-tissue homogenizer with sound abatement chamber and high-speed refrigerated centrifuges.
• Bacterial culture facility for cloning and expression of recombinant genes: equipped with culture hood, shaker incubator, water bath and high speed centrifuges.
• Facilities for protein analysis: expression, Western blotting along with both an imaging system and dark room facility.
• Microscopy/Imaging facilities: for conducting Immunofluorescence assays, Immunocytochemical/Immunohistochemical assays.
• Cancer Stem Cell Culture and characterization Facility: clean room with biosafety cabinets, CO2 incubators, centrifuge, microscope, refrigerators and deep-freezers; equipped with instrumentations to perform cell based assays as well as cell sorting - MACS based cell sorting as well as fluorescence based cell analysis using microscopy and flow-cytometry; infrastructure for fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) will be available shortly.

Biorepository 

The rapidly expanding Biorepository Platform of NIBMG provides centralized storage and preservation of all biospecimens collected from disease-specific and population-based study participants with informed voluntary consent. The preserved samples consist of blood, plasma, serum, tissues, cell scrapes, DNA, RNA and protein extracts. These are stored at temperatures ranging from -86⁰C to 4⁰C, as per requirement, for current and future use by researchers of NIBMG as well as those working in collaboration with the institute.

Data Analysis and Storage Infrastructure

The high performance computing and centralized data storage services of NIBMG are operated on 24x7 mode from a Data Centre located inside the institute. The facility consists of the following components:

• 300 TB Grid Scalar Central Data Storage platform (DDN)
• iCompute high performance system
• High performance parallel computing Clusters (PSSC Lab)
• High end servers and Workstations
• High performance computing cluster
• 10 GBPS Ethernet network

Computational Labs

NIBMG has specialized computational labs for diverse data analysis requirements of various research activities of the institute. Additionally, special facilities have been established for organizing hands on training courses and workshops on data analysis methods.

Digital Library

The institute has a centrally located Digital Library for accessing online Journals, e-books etc.  Access to a large number of high impact scientific journals is provided by the Library through the DBT-Electronic Library Consortium (DeLCON) network.