University of Tasmania, Australia

Fast Raman mapping now available at UTAS. This means researchers can now take a ‘chemical photograph’ of their sample with a spatial resolution of under 1 micrometre. It also can provide real three dimensional images as Raman is a confocal technique. The instrument has 4 different laser excitation lines, an external fibre optic probe for the analysis of larger samples and a heating & freezing cell to analyse samples at variable temperatures.

Many types of research project are carried out in the Molecular Genetics lab including paternity analyses, population genetic and phylogenetic studies on a range of organisms including bacteria, fungi, hardwood trees, flowering plants, insects, reptiles, fish and mammals. The molecular genetics instrument facility is equipped with a Beckman Coulter eight capillary automated sequencer, which is available for DNA sequencing as well as heterozygote detection, mutation detection, genotyping and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) detection.