Skills:
Cell Biology: Development of cell adhesion assays; Analysis of cell surface proteins by flow cytometry (Intellicyt HTFC and iQue cytometers; BD FACSCalibur, BD FACSAria) Culture of primary (endothelial and vascular smooth muscle) and tumor cells Excellent facility with fluorescent immunocytochemistry, widefield and confocal microscopy in both brightfield and fluorescence settings on fixed and live samples. Received on-site Vendor training to independently operate the Nikon A1 Confocal Microscope. Familiarity with the retinal angiogenesis model; facility with retina dissection, whole-mount staining, and RNA extraction; Generation, cloning, and expansion of stable cell lines; Transfection and microinjection of mammalian cells; Homogenization and downstream molecular analysis of a animal tissues; siRNA design, transfection, and knockdown validation; Isolation of primary VSMCs from mouse aorta; Isolation of primary endothelial cells from human neonatal foreskin; BrDu incorporation, CellTiter Glo, and Caspase Activation Assays; Transwell migration, wound closure and Platypus migration assays; Gravity-enforced multicellular spheroid generation; Endothelial sprouting and aortic ring sprouting assays; Cell path tracking and kymographic analysis Molecular Biology: Affymetrix Quantigene gene expression analysis platform; DNA cloning, purification, and electrophoresis; Standard PCR, RT-PCR, qPCR, and PCR mutagenesis; Primer design and qPCR data analysis; Adenovirus purification; generation of retrovirus from 293T cells; RNA isolation from cells and tissues; Bacterial transformation and culture Protein Sciences: Facility with Mesoscale platform, including development of novel assays; ELISAs (binding, blocking, cytokine quantification); GST protein purification and pulldown, SDS-PAGE, Western and far Western blotting; Antibody labeling and Dynabead conjugation; Immunoprecipitation, co-IP, and cell fractionation; Small GTPase activity assays Scientific Software: Facility with multiple image analysis platforms, including Nikon Elements, Imaris Bitplane, Metamorph, and Volocity; FloJo and Forecyt flow cytometry analysis packages; Web-based databases including NCBI, PubMed, SMART, Ensembl, CCLE, BioGPS, and SABioscience Array Analysis software; Vector NTI, GraphPad Prism (completed in-house training) Familiarity with LIMS tracking system and Sharepoint sites Symyx electronic notebook software