Many ecological, behavioral, and macro evolutionary studies could benefit from some "molecular biology," but it's often difficult for researchers to gain access to the methods, materials, and machines needed. It's our hope that the department and I can facilitate these approaches for students in the Princeton EEB department, by developing a molecular biology facility for their use.
     It's not uncommon for an EEB student to need to do "a little" molecular biology, to compliment a thesis project that is, for example, mostly behavioral. But most EEB labs don't have the significant investment in equipment, let alone the expertise, to help these students out. So, EEB has designated lab space, funding for equipment, and salary for a part time "director" to keep the facility up to specs and offer hands-on training (that's me). I also know how to run the autoclaves. Ongoing studies include paternity determination in zebras and orb spiders, mapping a polymorphic developmental trait in aphids, and studying population structure in cicadas and trematodes.
     We originally envisioned this as a specifically molecular genetic facility: the isolation, amplification, and analyses of DNA. Thus, I've invested in PCR machines, a PCR clean hood, gel boxes, and a gel visualization set-up; and I have contacts with sequencing centers and the Princeton microarray facility. But its become clear that the availability of multi-channel pipettes, microplate technology, and various incubators is helpful to students who are not all doing explicitly DNA work.
     In particular, the ability to increase throughput is driving much of molecular biology, and I think is as important to ecology as it is to genomics. A student is now measuring the antibody responses of birds in a 96 well format. I'm interested in working to semi-automate the various assays that students as using.
     The newest lab acquisition is a LI-COR 4300 DNA analyzer http://www.licor.com/bio/4300/4300.jsp. Half the price of the instrument was provided by a grant from LI-COR, that they give to schools that will use the LI-COR for undergraduate teaching. We have only just finished our on-site training, and are getting our first usable data. I imagine the LI-COR’s greatest strength for us will be the ability to do lots of microsatellite and AFLP analyses.      In addition to being in charge of the facility, I'm a postdoc in Laura Landweber's lab, where my interests are in the molecular evolution of protists (ciliated protozoa in particular), the evolution of transposons in their host's genomes, and the application of genomics to protist biology. But my upbringing has been in mixed biology departments, and I can generally talk that talk (my brother Dan http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/doaklab and sister Pat http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/~pat_doak are both ecologists). I expect to be interested in students' projects (so far I have been), and able to make intellectual contributions along the way.
     I've been at Princeton since August 2003, and the lab is coming together nicely. All the basic equipment is purchased and set up, and with students using various aspects of the lab, it's becoming clear what else we need to purchase. There are now undergraduates, graduates, and postdocs using the facilities. If I can address any specific questions about the facility, write and ask!                                                                                                     Tom Doak
Fig. 1. Benches of Pipettes. Pipettes are the heart of molecular biology, which is all done in microliters (unless you’ve moved on to nanodrops). The little plant is an orchid, a Dendrobium kingianum. I haven't included a pile of gel boxes, but imagine them just out of frame.

Fig. 2. Kodak Gel Documentation. Gel documentation is important, but is it important enough that this is the most expensive purchase I’ve made: just to take a picture of a gel? It may well be useful for other things as well; keep it in mind. Kelly has been taking nice pictures of immunoassays with it.

Fig. 3. Hybridization oven. It heats, it rocks, it rotates. We have a variety of other incubators, ovens and water baths, but this one is brand new.

Fig. 4. Thermocyclers/clean hood. We have two basic PCR machines (real-time cyclers are available in MolBio). There are various blocks available, and 96 well plates are accommodated. While thermocyclers are rather specialized, the clean/sterile hood in the background may have applications beyond setting up PCR reactions. It should be adequate for lite tissue culture, bacteriology, sterile germination of orchid seed, etc.

Fig. 5. Tom Doak. This is me, and the office I share with Laurence Gesquiere, who runs Jeanne Altmann's hormone assay facilities <http://www.eeb.princeton.edu/FACILITIES/endo.html>. She and I share a large lab space with John Bonner, the grand man of Dictyostelium (that's cellular slime mold).

Fig. 6. Dictionaries. Language is never far way.