A high sensitivity elemental mass spectrometry facility to support metallo-biology research on the Norwich Research Park

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Metals are essential for all forms of life, playing central roles in many of the reactions on which life depends, including, for example, respiration and photosynthesis. However, the properties that make metals essential also mean that they are potentially extremely toxic, and so living organisms have evolved often highly sophisticated systems through which they manage the uptake, utilisation and detoxification of metals. In some cases, such as iron, the metal can be difficult to acquire in sufficient quantities. Although iron is abundant in the earth's crust, it is highly insoluble and this severely limits its availability to living organisms, including humans, and, as a result, iron deficiency is the most widespread global nutritional deficiency. This application brings together a group of internationally leading researchers at the University of East Anglia, John Innes Centre and Quadram Institute Bioscience. It is focussed on understanding how metals function, how they are handled by cells/organisms and how this knowledge can be exploited for our benefit, for example: in developing news ways to interfere with essential metal-dependent pathways in disease-causing bacteria; in generating improved food crops with increased metal nutritional content; and in developing biotechnological processes that are based on natural metalloenzyme systems. Progress in all these projects is absolutely dependent on being able to accurately measure metal concentrations. For example, in developing improved food crops, researchers must be able to measure the nutritional metal (iron and zinc) contents of the crops but also concentrations of toxic metals such as cadmium to ensure that increased metal levels are confined only to those of nutritional value. Thus, to facilitate these projects and to allow them to develop in new ways, the application seeks support for the purchase of a new instrument, a type of mass spectrometer, which enables researchers to measure with great accuracy and sensitivity the amounts of different elements, including metals, but also sulfur and phosphorus, in a range of biological samples.