Lab Equipment

A large amount of the space is dedicated to laboratory equipment. This includes reagents and devices for various histological and immunohistochemical techniques, a Leica vibratome and a cryostat (Thermo) for sectioning tissue, as well as a separate room housing 4 microscope set-ups for intracellular injections in fixed brain tissue. 

In addition, the laboratory has an area dedicated to small animal perfusion, and a fully equipped electron microscopy laboratory with a rotary microtome (Microm), a laboratory microwave oven (Ted Pella), a pyramidotome (Leica EM Trim) for tissue preparation and an Ultracut (Leica EM UC6) to obtain semithin and ultrathin sections. 

LCCC includes also an Image Analysis Room with 7 computers for image analysis (some of them with Imaris software), two microscopes connected to computers with specialized software for image acquisition and analysis (Neurolucida and Stereo Investigator). 

The Confocal Microscopy Facility of the LCCC includes one laser scanning confocal microscopes: a Zeiss LSM 710 with 5 laser-heads (405, 488, 543, 594 and 633nm) and a Leica SP8 AOBS, WLL Laser + Argon (458, 476, 488, 496, 514,) and 405 lasers and 2PMT+2HyD. This facility also has a direct microscope with motorized stages connected to two computer workstations and an additional workstation capable of image processing and deconvolution, 3-D reconstruction, etc. 

It also has a separate room housing a dual-beam electron microscope (Crossbeam 540 electron microscope, Carl Zeiss NTS GmbH, Oberkochen, Germany) and its auxiliary equipment, which is capable of acquiring serial high-resolution images of neural tissue. Additionally, LCCC has a transmission electron microscope (Jeol 1011, 100 Kv; equipped with an 11 MpxGatan-Orius camera), and four computer workstations for electron microscope imaging processing, 3D reconstruction and analysis — using specific software (e.g., EspiINA, https://cajalbbp.csic.es/espina-2).  

Other lab equipment includes an icemaker, a Millipore water purification system, 3 chemical fume hoods, microscope slide warmers, refrigerators, freezers and other laboratory equipment.