Core Facilities

The Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital is committed to providing scientists with a world-class technology infrastructure. Shared facilities and core laboratories provide investigators with access to tools and technologies they would otherwise have to seek out or develop on their own, usually at great cost.

The 344,000 square foot building includes shared lab support on each floor. Currently, the following seven Core laboratories are operational:

• Animal Behavior Core
  Provides sophisticated behavioral analyses of rodent models
   
• Bioinformatics Core
  Offers computational expertise for genomic, metabolomic, and proteomic research
   
• High Throughput Behavioral Screening Core
  Performs small molecule and genetic screening services on a variety of well validated Drosophila (fruit fly) models of human neurological diseases.
   
• Human Neuronal Differentiation Core
  Provides expertise and equipment necessary to generate and experimentally manipulate human pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated progeny.
   
• In situ Hybridization Core
  Performs non-radioactive RNA in situ hybridization assays on individual tissues and for high-throughput applications 
   
• In vivo Neurophysiology Core
  Performs and offers training in rodent neurophysiological assays
   
• Microscopy Core
  Offers expertise and access to the state-of-the-art fluorescence, confocal, two-photon and multi-photon laser-scanning microscopes and electron microscopes
   
• Optogenetics and Viral Vectors Core
  Provides access to technologies and reagents to perform neurotropic viral expression, optogenetic manipulation, and in vivo electrophysiological stimulation/recordings
   
• Neuropathology Core
  Performs histological and immunohistochemical assays to faciliate neuropathological analyses of human and mouse tissues