Circular Dichroism Spectrometer

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to purchase a state-of-the-art high sensitivity Circular Dichroism Spectrometer (JASCO J-815) and to make it available to the entire Albert Einstein College of Medicine scientific community. This instrument will replace an 18-year old CD spectrometer that has much lower sensitivity, poor reliability and limited functions. The capabilities of the new JASCO instrument will extend well beyond those of any instrument currently available on the campus, as it will combine circular dichroism, optical absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies that can be made under equilibrium, titration, temperature-controlled and stopped-flow conditions. There are several users, with National Institutes of Health support, who have an essential need of the instrumentation to fulfill the aims of their projects. Once on campus it is anticipated that many other members of the scientific community will take advantage of this instrumentation to carry out their projects as well. The availability of the instrument will be announced by e-mail and a full description of its capabilities, along with scheduling information and technical documents, will be permanently available on a new web site. The planned projects with the instrumentation span a wide spectrum of biomedical areas including mechanistic studies of several enzymatic processes in physiologically important enzymes, studies of proteins that are believed to be involved in conferring drug and/or host resistance in the human pathogens, M. tuberculosis and C. jejuni, characterization of blood substitutes, which are in clinical trials, design and characterization of transition state inhibitors, which are in clinical trials for leukemia T-cell autoimmune disease, and determination of the fiber formation processes in 1-synuclein, the principle component of the neural tangle aggregates in Parkinson's disease. This instrumentation will be very relevant to public health in both the near and long term. It will immediately yield better understanding and advances in the development of blood substitutes and anti-cancer drugs. In the longer term, it will give new information on critical proteins from human pathogens, which may allow for new anti-microbial strategies, and finally, new mechanistic information on several human enzymes will be valuable for future clinical studies including the understanding of diseases and the development of new pharmaceutical agents.