The facility allows for the use of commercially available strains of mice, C57BL/6 and Swiss-Webster are stocked and maintained in the facility year-round. All mice are housed in flexible film positive pressure isolators to aid in the preservation of a germ-free status.
The Pitt Gnotobiotic Core Facility is a fee-for-service core that allows for experiments requiring germ-free (without bacteria, fungi, and exogenous viruses) and gnotobiotic (“known microbiota”) mice. Germ-free mice allow you to test the necessity and sufficiency of any microorganism or collection of organisms on a phenotype. Mice are kept in positive-pressure flexible film isolators. The germ-free status of the mice is re-confirmed periodically through third party microbiological testing.
