The Biochemistry Division is mainly housed on the fourth floor of Leigh Hall, originally built in the 1920’s and completely renovated in 1994.  This combination provides an aesthetically pleasing mixture of traditional Florida architecture and modern laboratory facilities.  This space includes facilities for organic synthesis, molecular biology, protein purification and a computer laboratory.

Each group has the specific instrumentation needed for their research located within their own lab spaces.  This includes centrifuges, UV-Vis spectrophotometers, HPLC, GC and GC/MS instrumentation as well as apparatus for molecular cloning and DNA sequencing.  The Division jointly owns several autoclaves, a preparative ultracentrifuge and a -80°C freezer as well as a cold room and dark room.  In addition, all students have round-the-clock access to an FTIR as well as several departmental NMR spectrometers with multi-nuclear capabilities (five 300 and one 500 MHz instruments).  A 600 MHz NMR instrument is available on-campus as part of the Center for Structural Biology.  The Chemistry Department also has extensive MS and X-ray crystallography facilities, both directed by full-time faculty members along with fully-staffed glass, electronic and machine shops.

All groups in the Biochemistry Division have Silicon Graphics workstations with software packages for molecular modeling and semi-empirical and ab initio computational studies.  Packages for large-scale DNA and protein sequence analysis are also installed on computers in the Stewart and Benner groups.  These workstations and personal computers in the laboratories are networked to the Internet and provide electronic mail and full Internet access.  U.F. faculty and graduate students are also eligible for free GatorLink accounts that provides dial-up access to the Internet

The Interdisclipinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) is an extensive network of on-campus core laboratories that provide ready access to a variety of services related to biochemistry and molecular biology including protein and peptide sequencing and analysis, DNA sequencing, monoclonal antibody production and many others.  In addition, the Education Core offers a number of hands-on short courses in techniques such as cloning, antibody applications and protein biochemistry.  These are particularly valuable for students who would like to move into biochemical research but lack a previous background in the experimental techniques.

Several libraries on campus house a comprehensive collection of books and journals necessary for research.  In addition, access to ISI's Web of Science and several other on-line databases are provided free to all networked computers with U.F. Internet addresses through the library web page.

In their first semester, entering students are given a desk in one of the research labs so that they can interact with the other students in the Division and learn first-hand about the research.  Once a student joins a research group, they are assigned a specific desk and laboratory work area in that group.
 

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