Marine Organism Culture Facility

该奖项提供资金，帮助购买南卡罗来纳大学哥伦比亚校区大规模培养海洋生物所需的设备。尽管该大学已经开发了一个强大的海洋生物学项目，但它的研究人员严重依赖巴鲁克研究所的设施，该研究所位于海岸上，距离哥伦比亚大学有一段距离。该设备将允许大规模培养海洋微生物以及培养和维护海洋动物。这两个机组的关键是安装一个大型循环海水系统，该系统将使用卡车从海岸运来的海水。拟议系统的能力和灵活性将使其能够满足当前和未来的需求，并将允许其他目前不研究海洋生物的教员启动此类研究，而不会对他们目前的研究计划造成重大干扰。海洋生物学的实验研究一直在为一个基本问题而苦苦挣扎，即培养和维护海洋动植物和微生物需要新鲜海水。尽管现在存在人工海水替代品，但它们的成本阻碍了它们的大规模使用。因此，许多海洋生物学研究都是在专门的海边研究实验室进行的，这些实验室往往与教员使用它们的校园相距相当远，而且通常只在夏季密集使用。这倾向于将海洋生物学家与其他生物学家隔离开来，并阻碍了现代技术，特别是分子生物学技术从其他生物学领域的转移。解决这个问题的一种方法是用卡车把大量的海水运到一所靠近但不在海洋上的大学，这样海洋生物就可以“就地”生长，这一数量足以进行全年的研究项目。这一解决方案还促进了涉及来自非海洋学科的熟练研究人员的多研究者、多学科研究计划。这种合作将是开发研究海洋生物的新方法以及在生物技术中使用这类生物的关键。

This award provides funds to aid in purchase of equipment needed for large scale culture of marine organisms at the Columbia campus of the University of South Carolina. Although the University has already developed a strong program in marine biology, its researchers depend heavily on facilities at the Baruch Institute, which is on the coast at some distance from Columbia. The equipment will permit large scale culture of marine microorganisms and the culture and maintenance of marine animals. Key to both units is the installation of a large, recirculating seawater system that will use seawater brought from the coast by truck. The capacity and flexibility of the proposed system will permit it to satisfy current and future needs, and will permit other faculty, who do not now study marine organisms, to initiate such studies without major disruption to their current research programs. Experimental studies in marine biology have always struggled with a basic problem, the need for fresh seawater for the culture and maintenance of marine animals, plants and microorganisms. Although artificial substitutes for seawater now exist, their cost precludes their use on a large scale. Thus much marine biology has been done in specialized oceanside research laboratories which are often at considerable distance from the campuses whose faculty use them and are often used intensively only during the summer. This has tended to isolate marine biologists from other biologists, and has hindered the transfer of modern techniques, especially those of molecular biology, from other areas of biology. One solution to this problem is to truck large amounts of seawater to a university which is near, but not on the ocean, so that marine organisms can be grown "on site" is sufficient quantity for year round research programs. This solution also facilitates multi-investigator, multidisciplinary research programs that involve skilled researchers from non-marine disciplines. Such collaborations will be key to the development of new approaches to the study of marine organisms, and to the use of such organisms in biotechnology.