USF microbiome institutes biorepository core aims to create a high quality, highly systematic and efficient system for the storage of human and animal (scientific use) origin samples including blood, fecal samples, body fluid swabs, DNA to be used in different disease conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, viral infections, infectious disease. The major aim of the biorepository core is storage of the samples for long term storage and be used for longitudinal studies on the samples. In addition to the disease controls, we are collection and storing the samples from the healthy controls at regular intervals. The average age in Florida is 42.4, compared to the USA's national average of 38.1, so it provides high age population for the age-related alterations in human physiology studies. With the normal aging if any conditions are developed in the controls, they will offer a great system for the alternation in sample properties with the physiological changes. It has been known that the prevalence of age-related cognitive disorders is increasing. Effective prevention and treatment interventions are unavailable due to a poor understanding of aging biology, and the storage core will offer added advantage for the scientific understanding. Currently we are storing the samples under multiple project umbrella like the multi-site clinical study across the state of Florida called Microbiome in aging Gut and Brain (MiaGB) Consortium. Wherein we are collecting and preserving the multiple samples of same individual for long term storage including fecal samples, salivaetc.

Through these aims, the core facility will be providing high quality and reliable services that will further promote the development of the research in the different disease conditions.

Services

1. Collection, storage, processing of the human and animal origin samples according to the global biobanking standards.
2. Designing, optimization and making available the research protocols, questionnaires and consent formats for specific collection, shipping, and record keeping.
3. Maintenance of the basic clinical data elements for all samples in database like Redcap.
4. Round-the-clock monitoring of freezers with adequate backup and disaster recovery protocols in place.
5. An efficient inventory system that offers a rapid query and retrieval of requested specimens
6. De-identification of clinical specimens to guarantee privacy and an efficient barcoding system to track the life history of the specimens.
7. Processing and preservation methods that offer specimens with high analytical performance and reproducibility

All requests for services are processed through Dr. Hariom Yadav (hyadav@usf.edu)

The metagenomics and bioinformatics core was established to provide technical and research support to study microbial communities' structure and function form variety of sample types belonging to human, animal, plants and environmental origin. The primary goal of the microbiome core is to facilitate microbiome studies for researchers at university of south Florida (USF). The facility is a centralized and cost-effective resource for processing and storing biological specimens, and sequencing and analysis of microbial communities for various research studies, including basic science, clinical, translational, and epidemiological projects. We also provide bioinformatics analytic support services to investigators interested in basic, pre-clinical, clinical and epidemiological transplant studies. We provide consultation on all aspects of study design and sample collection. The core receives, processes, and stores coded samples as needed. We provide DNA and RNA extraction and prepare and sequence samples with the Illumina Nextseq 1000 /2000 platform. We also perform bioinformatics analyses on sequencing data.

Services

1. Sample collection, microbial genomic DNA extraction.
2. DNA, RNA, Protein quantification using Nanodrop, Qubit 3 fluorometer.
3. Provide study design input like number of samples required to provide a sufficient statistical power, selection of appropriate sequencing method (16S amplicon profiling or metagenome sequencing)
4. Total bacteria quantitation by 16S rRNA quantitative PCR
5. 16R amplicon, ITS amplicon, transcriptome sequencing, miRNA sequencing, shotgun metagenomic sequencing.
6. Microbiome analysis.
7. Pathway analyses.

All requests for services are processed through Dr. Hariom Yadav (hyadav@usf.edu)

The aging preclinical studies core provides state-of-art models for the study of age associated physiological changes and restoring the adverse changes by therapeutic interventions. We have mice models for Aging, Alzheimer’s disease, (all other models) etc. The experimental animal facility comprised of two central facilities including Comparative Medicine facility for Research & Innovation at university of south Florida and Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute at university of south Florida. The animal includes (detailed names of the models) B6, APPS, Vilcre, F2, F3, 3XTG-AD etc. The core has developed standard operating procedures for all behavioral testing that is approved by the University’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

We perform the following behavioral testing on the animals. The testing apparatuses are located in eight individual sound-proof testing suites, including:

• SENSORY & MOTOR TESTS:  Rotarod, Grip strength-motor test, Balance beam, Hanging wire test, Mouse staircase test, Olfactory avoidance test, Adhesive removal test.
• LEARNING & MEMORY TESTS: Morris water maze, Y-maze, Conditioned place preference, Object recognition task
• SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL/STRESS RESPONSE TESTS: Elevated plus maze, elevated zero maze, Marble burying test, Sociability 3-chamber test, Automated tail suspension test, Sucrose preference test

Services

1. Aging modeling.
2. Animal Functional & Pharmacological Studies.
3. Cell & Tissue-based Studies.
4. Drug & Compound Delivery.
5. Prebiotics, Probiotics and humanized FMTs delivery.
6. Breeding of specialized mouse strains.
7. In vivo therapeutics efficacy & safety testing.
8. Hematopoietic & immune cell analysis.

All requests for services are processed through Dr. Hariom Yadav (hyadav@usf.edu)