Replacement Phosphorimager for the Physical Biochemistry Instrument Facility at IUB

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A grant has been awarded to Indiana University, Bloomington (IUB) under the direction of Dr. Andrew Feig for the acquisition of phosphorimager system that will become part of the Physical Biochemistry Instrumentation Facility. The facility houses a variety of instruments for structural, spectroscopic, thermodynamic and kinetic characterization of biochemical systems. More than 20 faculty members from at least 6 departments (Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Medical Sciences, Physics and Optometry) use this facility although the majority of the users derive from the Chemistry and Biology Departments. The instrument acquired through this grant will be used primarily for its phosphorimager capabilities, but the model chosen also has the ability to do direct fluorescence imaging (red and green excitation) and chemiluminescence. The instrument can be upgraded in the future if blue wavelength excitation is needed. This instrument is also capable of reading microarrays. The phosphorimager will allow laboratory experiments that make use of fluorescent or chemiluminescent tags in lieu of traditional 32P labeling. Thus, excellent experiments that were removed from the undergraduate lab curriculum can be re-incorporated using this imaging system. The microarray reading capabilities of the instrument will also be used in curriculum enhancement through development of novel experiments for the undergraduate lab analyzing expression profiles during stress response. Thus, undergraduates will be exposed to state-of-the-art instrumentation in their laboratory course. The equipment will also be used by more than 50 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. The major and minor users of the instrumentation are actively involved in several programs at IUB (MEDIC-B, IU Stars and McNair Scholars) that attract minority students interested in careers in science.