Facilities
Ph.D. student Veronica Armijos titrates dengue virus from infected mosquitoes in a biosafety level 3 laboratory.
The Center for Vector-borne Diseases maintains many biosafety level (BSL) 2 containment facilities and several BSL-3 facilities for research on agents causing West Nile, chikungunya and dengue fevers, Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, malaria and other human and veterinary pathogens.
The Arthropod Containment Level 2 (ACL2) insectary facility includes 11 rooms, 6 with temperature-, light-, and humidity-controlled walk-in environmental chambers that can be adjusted to maintain precise conditions for a variety of species. Three additional rooms are available, including two procedure rooms for manipulating infected vectors. A large central hallway includes additional workspace, bench space, and deep sinks for research-associated activities. A separate animal room inside the facility provides TRACS-approved housing for study animals for transmission cycles as well as for colony maintenance.
Our BSL-3 facilities include biosafety cabinets, an insectary with a glove box and cycling incubators, animal rooms equipped for avian or small vertebrate studies, and molecular suites for nucleic acid manipulation. We also possess mosquito traps and bird nets as well as vehicles for field projects.
We welcome collaborative projects with investigators needing these spaces for their research. Please contact us at inpessah@ucdavis.edu.