MRI: Acquisition of a Circular Dichroism Spectrometer for Research and Training at St. Mary's College of Maryland

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An award is made to St. Mary's College of Maryland to purchase a circular dichroism (CD) spectrometer for collaborative research. This instrument monitors rotational change in circular polarized light as it passes through a sample with chirality, which a common property of biological, inorganic and organic materials. Faculty and students will use the CD spectrometer to probe macromolecular structural characteristics of soil organic matter, polymers and biomolecular interactions, and to examine changes to chemical properties under specific experimental conditions. This instrument will facilitate scholarly and instructional collaborations across disciplines and significantly enhance the college's infrastructure by providing new technology for quantitative analysis. It also will contribute towards the college's curricular transformations associated with participation in the multi-year Council for Undergraduate Research Transformations Project (NSF-DUE #1625354), which aims to integrate research activities into the undergraduate STEM curriculum to enhance student learning and better position students for success in the professional and academic arenas. The research projects facilitated with the CD spectrometer will address important societal issues including carbon cycling, pollutant fate and transport in the environment, the impact of emerging contaminants like endocrine disruptors on marine invertebrates, development of clean tight-gas extraction methods, and heavy metal exposure. CD spectroscopic studies at the college will augment and enhance current and future work by allowing faculty and student researchers to use the instrument to provide the following: (a) direct evidence of molecular interactions within DNA damage tolerance and repair systems; (b) improvement of molecular design of small molecule inhibitors for biological targets; (c) elucidation of structural thermodynamics of proteins in an avian endocrine system; (d) exploration of protein conformations and metal ion coordination geometry of metal-organic complexes; and (e) examination of ion behavior, structural changes and interactions of clay during uptake of fluid species in different thermochemical environments. Results from experiments using the CD spectrometer will benefit a broad range of research fields, from geochemical processes to molecular mechanisms of DNA repair in biological systems to whole organism physiology in oysters and birds.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.