These include equipment such as scintillation counters, ultracentrifuges, gamma radiation detectors and microtiter plate readers. Judd calls these UM's bread and butter. A researcher can use such instruments to prepare data for additional analysis on a big instrument in a core facility. Most instruments at the University are free to any trained researcher. Other equipment is provided for a fee.
Some facilities are available with technical assistance and support.
The Montana Molecular Biology Facility, for example, offers DNA sequencing and synthesis and peptide synthesis and has a technician who runs experiments and returns the data to a researcher for a fee. Diana Lurie, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences, finds the availability of shared facilities at UM surprisingly good. She's impressed with equipment quality and access, both crucial issues to researchers because UM is relatively small but has a growing research program. Lurie's laboratory houses a confocal microscope to examine tissue sections. Using laser technology, the microscope is able to optically section the layers of a cell.