The laboratory of Dr. Decho (1750 sq. ft.) is located on the 5^th floor of the Public Health Research Center (PHRC) Building in the Arnold School of Public Health. Our laboratory is designed to conduct microbial biofilm research. 

Virtual Lab Tour

>> Click rooms for images

Our instrumentation includes:

• Microbial culture room equipped HEPA-filtered air filtration & temperature/light incubators.
• Scanning Laser confocal microscopy and quantitative imaging capabilities (a new Leica TCS SP5 Confocal System with Broadband, AOBS, FLIM, FRET, FRAP; and an Olympus System: Fluoview IX70 Inverted Scope w/Kr-Ar excitation lasers and DIC);
• COBRA II AutoGamma Photon Counting System (Packard);
• TriCarb 2300TR Liquid Scintillation Counting System (Packard);
• Nexus 670 Fourier Tranform Infared Spectrometer (FT-IR) equipped for single & multibounce ATR;
• Fluoromax II Spectrofluorometer (Jobin-SPEX);
• Shimadzu UV-2401 UV-VIS Spectrophotometer;
• PAGE (1-D and 2-D) Gel Systems;
• Veritas Microplate Luminometer;
• (two lyophilizers, balances, hoods, water purification systems, autoclaves, ultracold freezers, etc); Our capabilities include fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) capabilities; quorum sensing signal characterization; various molecular approaches; Image analysis/processing;
• a new Raman/Confocal Microscopy Facility (Bruker Senterra System, Dept. ENHS

* We also have access to:

• The new USC Environmental Genomics Facility (in Dept. ENHS, Arnold School of Public Health);
• The USC Microscopy Center which houses a (1)  a Single and 2-Photon Scanning laser microscopy system (BioRad MRC 1024MP equipped with a Nikon Eclipse TE 300 Inverted Compound Microscope); TEM, SEM, ESEM.
• The USC Medical School Microscopy Center houses a (2) Zeiss LSM 510 META Confocal System on a Zeiss Axioplan 200 motorized microscope, located at the USC Medical School. Lasers include a 405 diode, argon, and red and green HeNe lasers providing a wide range of available excitation values for selection of fluorochromes. This system is also equipped for advanced imaging techniques such as spectral separation of signals, FRET and FRAP.
• The USC Mass Spectrometry, Proteomics, and NMR Facilities house a range of instrumentation including a Finnigan 4500 - Quadrupole instrument, a Micromass Q-TOF I - Tandem quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometer; a Micromass Quattro LC - Triple quadrupole mass spectrometer; a Bruker Ultraflex MALDI TOF/TOF - Matrix assisted laser desorption/ ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometer and a Micromass Q-TOF API-US - Highly sensitive hybrid quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometer configured for online nano-LC-MS/MS analysis of protein mixtures, and a Varian Inova 500 mHz NMR.