Section 3 contains several project rooms in which the animals in the experiment are housed. Experiments up to genetic engineering safety level S2 are possible in these rooms. This involves, for example, animals that have been infected with pathogens (e.g. hospital germs) in order to investigate the effects of the infection and possible therapeutic approaches. For the research groups working on animal experiments, operating theaters equipped with modern equipment are made available in which interventions and treatments on small animals can be carried out professionally. For example, we provide equipment such as anesthetic gas vaporizers, warming plates and blood gas analyzers. This area also contains rooms specially equipped for behavioral experiments, including a rotarod for testing motor skills and an X-shaped maze for learning tasks.
Section 3 also contains the quarantine rooms, where animals are housed that are brought into our facility from outside and in which pathogens have been found that are not wanted in our facility. In order to prevent the transmission of these pathogens to the existing animal population, the new arrivals are housed in a separate room.
After appropriate instruction, the scientific staff can enter and use the project and operating rooms independently. Scientific staff are not permitted to enter the breeding rooms.
A special feature of the facility is the cooling chamber for our Syrian golden hamsters. A dedicated room for keeping these animals with an adjoining "hamster cold room" has been installed for this purpose, in which the hamsters are either kept at normal temperatures or sent into hibernation by lowering the temperature. The cold room is of course ventilated and illuminated accordingly. Hamsters also hibernate in the wild when the temperature in the environment drops below 10°C. For this purpose, the hamster builds a warm hiding place with the materials available, such as cellulose cloths, into which it retreats. Occasionally hamsters also wake up again to eat.
Area management
Helga Köbrig, Animal care supervisor
Forewoman
Eva Böhme, animal caretaker for research and clinics
