Instrumentation for the Macromolecular Biophysics Facility at the UCSD

加州大学圣地亚哥分校高分子生物物理设施的仪器

• 批准号: 9731612
• 负责人: Susan Taylor
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-07-15 至 2000-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9731612&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Instrumentation; Macromolecular; Biophysics; Facility; UCSD

Essential to our understanding of a large number of biological processes is the characterization of molecular structure and molecular interactions. Faculty at the University of Califomia San Diego proposes to establish a Macromolecular Biophysics Facility (MBF) to advance these types of studies. The function of the MBF is to provide the necessary instrumentation for biomolecular and biophysical studies and to facilitate interactions between investigators at UCSD with interests in biophysical and biomolecular research. The primary goal of the MBF is to create a biophysical infrastructure that will make essential instrumentation readily available and at the same time foster interactions between researchers. Instruments to be provided by this project include a circular dichroism spectrometer to analyze secondary structure of proteins and conformational changes due to ligand binding, an analytical ultracentrifuge for the characterization of the physical properties of macromolecules, and a surface plasmon resonance instrument for the study of protein-protein, protein-DNA, and ligand receptor interactions. These instruments will be combined with peptide synthesis and N-terminal sequencing instrumentation currently located in individual laboratories that will be contributed to the facility. The MBF will be used by a diverse set of faculty for biophysical analysis of macromolecules including analysis of protein-protein, protein-lipid, and protein-nucleic acid interactions important in such diverse biological processes as cell-cell interactions, signal transduction and transcription. To be effective, a facility such as this must be properly administered and maintained. The aim of the facility is not simply to purchase state-of-the-art instrumentation, but to establish a well-coordinated facility where staff will be available for training students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty. The MBF is part of a concerted effort to maximize the research environment at UCSD an d to foster interdisciplinary research efforts. The MBF will join three other existing centers at UCSD (the NIR Research Resource for Data Collection, the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, and the National Biological Computing Resource) under the umbrella of the newly formed Center for Research in Biological Structure and will complement the existing centers by providing crucial common analysis instruments for macromolecular biophysics.

分子结构和分子间相互作用的表征对我们理解大量的生物过程至关重要。加州大学圣地亚哥分校的教师建议建立一个大分子生物物理设施（MBF）来推进这些类型的研究。MBF的功能是为生物分子和生物物理研究提供必要的仪器，并促进UCSD研究人员与生物物理和生物分子研究兴趣之间的互动。MBF的主要目标是创建一个生物物理基础设施，使基本仪器随时可用，同时促进研究人员之间的互动。该项目提供的仪器包括用于分析蛋白质二级结构和配体结合引起的构象变化的圆二色光谱仪、用于表征大分子物理性质的分析超敏仪以及用于研究蛋白质-蛋白质、蛋白质-DNA和配体受体相互作用的表面等离子体共振仪器。这些仪器将与目前位于各个实验室的肽合成和N-末端测序仪器相结合，这些仪器将提供给该设施。 MBF将被一组不同的教师用于大分子的生物物理分析，包括蛋白质-蛋白质，蛋白质-脂质和蛋白质-核酸相互作用的分析，这些相互作用在细胞-细胞相互作用，信号转导和转录等不同的生物过程中很重要。为了有效，这样的设施必须得到适当的管理和维护。该设施的目的不仅仅是购买最先进的仪器，而是建立一个协调良好的设施，工作人员将可用于培训学生，博士后研究员和教师。MBF是一项共同努力的一部分，旨在最大限度地提高UCSD的研究环境，并促进跨学科的研究工作。MBF将加入UCSD其他三个现有的中心（近红外数据收集研究资源，国家显微镜和成像研究中心和国家生物计算资源），隶属于新成立的生物结构研究中心，并将通过为大分子生物物理学提供关键的通用分析仪器来补充现有的中心。