High-end MALDI Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer for Bioanalysis

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PROJECT SUMMARY Mass spectrometry (MS) is an essential tool to support biologically and biomedically related research at Arizona State University (ASU). In 2018, ASU has centralized its mass spectrometry services in a core facility that serves over 100 researchers throughout ASU and surrounding academic and biotechnology entities. ASU is proud of having been recognized as #1 in innovation for the 6th time in a row by US News, but to hold this status and serve the needs for the ASU research community and its students, core and support facilities need to meet the requirements of the next generation cutting-edge research environment. The MS Core Facility at ASU is centrally located in the Biodesign Institute, a forerunner of biological and medical invention focusing on societal problems such as for example a saliva based COVID-19 test that was made available to the Arizona public during the ongoing pandemic. ASU and the Biodesign Institute also thrive as a top research institution for biomolecular structure elucidation to unlock key biomolecular details responsible for biological and medical processes involved in metabolism and diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Researchers at ASU also strive in gaining biomolecular signatures important to understand energy conversion and photosynthesis to solve our and future generation’s energy needs. In addition, the School of Molecular Sciences at ASU has among its faculty members talented young and established researchers that take molecular sciences to the next level with innovative synthesis approaches. All these areas require reliable and flexibly accessible structure elucidation tools, which in many cases is accomplished or supplemented through matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) MS. However, the MS core facility at ASU only owns one rather basic MALDI MS instrument, which we intend to supplement through the current proposal with a more sensitive and higher resolution instrument also capable of MALDI imaging. With this new MALDI MS instrument we will upgrade the available MS analysis capabilities at ASU to meet the needs of our currently funded NIH researchers but also provide a tool paving the way for the next generation of research projects facilitated through high end mass spectrometry.