Mission Statement

The focus of Conservation Biology today is to identify and ameliorate threats of extinction for species and their ecosystems. Habitat loss and fragmentation and risks of hybridization with nonnative species represent significant extinction threats for many populations. Molecular genetic technologies have been increasingly used to analyze genetic structure of natural populations, determine degree of population isolation and identify hybrids. The Conservation Genetics Center at UNR was created to bring recent technological advances in equipment designed for high-throughput genomic analysis to bear on questions in conservation biology. The aim of the center is to improve the ability of conservation biologists to ask questions about spatial and temporal dynamics in a cost-effective and timely manner.

The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) has recently received funding from the National Science Foundation EPSCoR Program to create a Center of Excellence in Conservation Genetics. The core facilities for the center are the DNA Analysis Facility, funded by NSF EPSCoR Genomics Initiative and the Laboratory for Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics (LEEG). The DNA Analysis Facility is a state-of-art center with high throughput, robotic equipment to isolate DNA, run PCR and sequence DNA. The center is equipped with an ABI 3700 and 310 automated sequencers (Perkin Elmer). The LEEG is the main facility for pilot projects and houses PCR facilities and an ABI 310 automatic sequencer.