Our facilities

Votey 367/369

Bioreactors. Bioreactors are the heart of the lab. We have experience operating complex bioreactor systems with rigorous instrumentation and controls, but we also value cobbled together bioreactors made from spare tubing and used soda bottles. We also assess full-scale bioreactors throughout Vermont. 

GC-MS/MS. Our GC-MS/MS allows us to identify and quantify a wide range of fermentation products, environmental chemicals, and metabolites. This instrument performs both liquid and head-space injections. 

GC-TCDs. We also have a GC with dual TCDs. We use this GC for monitoring headspace gasses in bioreactors, including carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane. 

Nucleic Acid Extraction, Purification, and Quantification. Nucleic acid extraction from complex environmental samples can be challenging, especially for downstream processes that require high quality, high mass, and high purity DNA or RNA. We do most extraction in-house and have experience developing protocols for challenging environmental matrices.   

Other Testing. In addition to the testing described above, we perform routine environmental testing including nutrients (N and P compounds), total carbohydrates, total proteins, total fats, and chemical oxygen demand.

Sequencing facilities

Nucleotide sequencing will be performed with the Vermont Genetics Network or at the UVM College of Medicine. The Vermont Genetics Network also performs proteomics. 

Computational resources

The Vermont Advanced Computing Core houses the computational resources that we use for analyzing sequencing data, including workflows for 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing analyses, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and phylogenetic analyses.