Acquisition of Equipment for Study of Macromolecular Interactions

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The aim of this proposal is to establish a core facility which will provide the necessary instrumentation for state of the art study of protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions. This facility will support the research programs of faculty in the Department of Biology of Emory College, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology of the School of Medicine of Emory University. These two Departments are located on successive floors of the Rollins Research Center, a modern building less than five years old. Faculty whose research efforts form the basis of this proposal include R. Ahmed (Micro.), J. Boss (Micro.), G. Churchward (Micro.), R. Compans (Micro.), G. Crouse (Biol.), D. Falls (Biol.), H. Ellis (Biol.), A. Glasgow (Micro.), S. L'Hernault (Biol.), G. Jones (Biol.), J. Lucchesi (Biol.), S. Jinks-Robertson (Biol.), C. Moran (Micro.) and K Ziegler (Micro.). There are already extensive interactions between these faculty members because they are members of the interdepartmental graduate programs in Genetics and Microbiology, and share common research interests and teaching duties. The core facility will consist of a Biacore 2000 biomolecular interaction analysis system, a Beckton Dickinson FACSCalibur flow cytometer and cell sorting system, 2 Molecular Dynamics Storm phosphorimagers with autoradiography and fluorescent detection capabilities, an ABI Prism automated DNA sequencer and a Pharmacia ALF Express automated DNA sequencer. This equipment will allow this varied group of well funded investigators to perform state of the art studies of macromolecular interactions that occur in many fundamental biological processes. These processes include DNA replication, recombination and repair, transcription and the regulation of gene expression, the development of multicellular organisms and the basic functioning of the immune system. The types of interactions that are being studied include the interactions between cell surface receptor proteins and their ligands, protein-protein interactions that occur in the assembly of complex protein machines such as RNA polymerase holoenzymes, the interactions between these protein machines and their regulatory proteins, and the binding of recombination and repair enzymes, nucleic acid polymerases and regulatory proteins with their nucleic acid substrates. The investigators included in this proposal currently have $1,899,888 in direct costs for the current year, of which $170,457 is from NSF. These figures include only funding for basic research and do not include funding for disease-oriented research. The goal of this application matches NSF goals as follows. Some of the items of equipment proposed in this application are not currently available on campus and will allow the development of completely new experimental approaches. Access to other existing items of equipment is becoming increasingly difficult because of the expansion of research activities at Emory University. The proposed facility will therefore improve accessibility to and greater utilization of modem research instrumentation. All of the investigators listed in this proposal train graduate and undergraduate students. Together, they supervise in their laboratories 12 postdoctoral fellows, 31graduate students and 20 undergraduate students and so the instrumentation will be used in the training of future scientists. Matching funds (50%) for this proposal will be available.