The National Eye Institute funded P30 Vision Research Center Core Grant (P30EY022589) provides critical support to the UCSD vision research community that are usually not available to individual researchers. The four cores described below provide access to biostatistical, computational, and technical expertise as well as sophisticated imaging and tissue processing equipment that will enhance the productivity and efficiency of your work.
P30 Vision Research Center Core grant provides vision research resources and services organized in the following four cores:
This core provides statistical analyses and consultation to investigators. A full-time senior biostatistician is available to advise on analysis strategies and implement sophisticated statistical techniques.
2. Animal Structure and Function Core:
This core offers Spectralis (Heidelberg Engineering) spectral domain optical coherence tomograph and Micron III and Micron IV instruments, as well as the VERIS™ multifocal electrophysiological system (Electro-Diagnostic Imaging) and a full-time animal technician to assist with ocular structural imaging and functional imaging (electrophysiology) in animals. The use of ocular imaging methods that enable longitudinal observations in a living animal can greatly reduce the need to sacrifice animals at different time points in an experiment. The core will facilitate this process and centralize the expertise, fluorescence imaging, and retinal function testing equipment to allow our researchers to maximize their time and resources.
3. Computational Ophthalmology Core:
The Computational Ophthalmology core provides high-performance computing resources and state-of-the-art custom computer programming to support UCSD vision investigators’ cellular, animal, and human vision and genomics research. The powerful CPU and GPU computational condo clusters (Triton Shared Computational Cluster (TSCC)) managed by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and custom software tools provided by this core facilitate analysis of these large datasets. The Computational Ophthalmology core also supports a computer programmer with image analysis and deep learning programming expertise to support computational analyses of both basic science and clinical vision research projects. In addition, institutional software licenses (FilemakerPro, Github, FreezerPro) are provided.
4. Tissue Processing and Histology Core:
This core provides rapid characterization of eye tissues with respect to histology, immunohistochemistry, light microscopy and confocal microscopy by supporting a technician who is familiar with ocular anatomy and techniques required to properly process ocular tissues. Specific instrumentation available through this core includes a Cryostat, Microtome HM355S and HistoStar Embedding station.