INBRE CENTRAL INSTRUMENTATION CORE

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Delaware INBRE Annual Progress Report (APR) 2007 Grant No. 5P20RR016472-2007 Shared Research Instrumentation Core The Delaware INBRE Shared Research Instrumentation Core provides shared, largely centralized instrumentation located at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and at several departments of the University of Delaware to researchers throughout the statewide Network. Individual, smaller biomedical research and training laboratories are now in place at each of the academic partner institutions. The Research Instrumentation Centers are in place and operated by a cadre of highly qualified staff scientists. Utilization of these facilities continues to grow with researches throughout the Network. Evaluation mechanisms are in place to track the usage and growth of these shared facilities. Regular meetings are scheduled among the Core Center directors to share common operating strategies. Core Center fee waivers, partially funded by the INBRE grant, provide reduced cost or free center access for faculty and student researchers to launch student projects or to establish baseline data sets for grant development. The Delaware INBRE continues to support workshops for faculty, graduate students and other researchers to present available capabilities within the Network. The continuing focus for the Core Centers is on implementing best management practices to ensure efficient operation and on the long-term sustainability of these facilities. The Research Instrumentation Centers in the Delaware INBRE include: Instrumentation Center Core Center Staff 2006 User Base [# of Faculty Groups] Bioimaging Kirk Czymmek, PhD 170 Elizabeth Adams, PhD (11,971 hours total) Deborah Powell, BS (42% increase over 05) Shanon Modla. MS Bioinformatics Douglas ONeal, PhD 14 Mihailo Kaplarevic, MEE (23 projects) Eric Garrison, MS (decrease of 20% due to new charge mechanism) DNA Sequencing & Genotyping Brewster Kingham, MS 75 (10,000 samples processed) (30% increase since 05) Mass Spectrometry John Dykins, MS 6 (9% usage increase over 05) Microarray Emily Huang, BS 7 (Significant drop due to change in center strategy) Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Steve Bai, PhD 11 Heather Egolf-Fox, BS (increase of 10%) Protein Production & Analysis Yu-Sung Wu, PhD, 6 Angel Huang, MS (20 researchers, no change) Accomplishments of the Instrumentation Core in the INBRE Year 3 include: 1) A statewide research infrastructure of Biomedical Core Center facilities with state-of-the-art instrumentation and professional staff is in place. 2) A Core Center Web Portal (www.dbi.udel.edu/coreinstrumentation.html) is available for faculty and students across the INBRE Network to locate research resources. The Core Center Web Portal describes available instrumentation, lists contact information for Core Center directors and staff, and provides information for pricing for services and scheduling for instrument access. 3) A Core Center Fee Waiver program is partially supported by the INBRE to provide free access for new researchers to the Core Centers for developmental projects that lead to the creation of baseline data for future grant proposals. During the current year, 12 faculty projects for a total of $30,600 have been awarded. These projects included faculty members from 3 different institutions. 4) Core Center Directors, including Dr. Katia Sol-Church from the COBRE-supported Biomolecular Core at Nemours, meet on a bi-monthly basis to discuss best practices for common issues such as scheduling, billing, advertising, and joint workshops. Professional education of scientific Core Center staff members continued through attendance at regional and national conferences and at internal workshops. 5) The Bioinformatics Center has installed a software portal to ease access to the considerable computing resources for all members in the INBRE Network. This portal allows users to submit new computing jobs into the computing server queue and improves access to a broad set of life sciences and biomedical software available to users of the Bioinformatics Center. 6) The Core Centers provided several workshops and short courses to reach out to new faculty and students across the network. " The Bioimaging Center hosted the 3rd Regional Zeiss User Meeting on January 16-18, 2007. The three-day event was attended by about 30 core center directors from the Mid-Atlantic region. Zeiss organizes these events to introduce high-end users to new technologies, in this case the next-generation confocal microscope. Based on this workshop and the access to next-generation instrumentation, UD is now considering a major upgrade to the confocal setup in the Bioimaging Center. " DSU held its first ever Internet2 day on October 24, 2006. The workshop was organized and hosted by Dr. Jaiwant Mulik and the INBRE-supported Delaware Scientific and Advanced Computing Center (DeSAC) at DSU. The program was intended to highlight the new capabilities of DSUs access to the Internet2 consortium. About 30 DSU faculty attended the event including representatives from UD, Wilmington College and Delaware Technical Community College. " A Core Center Open House was held at DBI on September 29, 2006. The Open House event included presentations by all Core Center directors and was followed by tours and demonstrations in the labs. Attendance doubled from the previous year to 62 attendees representing all institutions across the Network. Evaluations submitted by the attendees showed a very high effectiveness of the workshop and the Core Center tours, and a high appreciation for the center introductions by the core directors. " The Open House presentations were video-streamed live across the recently installed INBRE-supported videoconference system. An archived copy of the Open House and a growing number of other research presentations is available on the DBI web under www.dbi.udel.edu/events/luncheons.html. 7) Two new Staff Scientists were added to the Core Centers: " Dr. Elizabeth Adams, a newly hired expert in Atomic Force Microscopy in the Bioimaging Center gave a video-streamed presentation on September 28, 2006. Her presentation was the kickoff event of the fall luncheon seminar series and was attended by over 100 people. " Dr. Mihailo Kaplarevic has joined the Bioinformatics Center as a Database Specialist. Dr. Kaplarevic will bring much needed expertise for faculty and students in the Network to design, manage and analyze large scale genomic and proteomic databases. 8) The original investment into Core Center instrumentation has been over $7 Million. Some of the instruments are now between 3 and 5 years old. DBI has invested about $1.5 Million in 2005 and about $1M in 2006 into the replacement and upgrade of the Core center instrumentation. Funds are generated partially through INBRE funding and to a growing amount from other sources: " A fluorescent attachment for an existing microscope was installed in the tissue culture facility at DBI to enable researchers to more easily analyze their specimens. ($10k) " Two AlphaImager Mutlti-Imaging systems were installed in the Common Core facility at DBI to replace two aging instruments. The common facilities are frequently used by INBRE-supported faculty members from across the Network. ($20k) " A confocal microscope located at the UD Lewes campus has been significantly upgraded with INBRE funds and relocated to the Bioimaging Center at DBI to reduce the increasingly long waiting lines at the multi-photon confocal microscope and provide broader access to this instrument for the research community. ($30k) " A Veeco Bioscope Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was installed in the Bioimaging Center. To support and maximize the value of this new capability, the Bioimaging Center hired Dr. Elizabeth Adams, an experienced scanning probe microscopist who joined DBI in March 2006 after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford University in the U.K. The AFM was purchased with funds provided by the NSF-EPSCoR program. ($230k) " A Rigaku small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) camera was installed in the Chemical Engineering Department in August 2006 to support the hire of a new faculty member, Dr. Thomas Epps, III, who joined the faculty in June 2006. The SAXS instrument will be used to investigate crystalline, semi-crystalline, and amorphous materials with nanoscale features in the 1-100 nm range. Dr. Epps will provide access to and expertise for this instrument for other researchers in the Network to analyze powders, films, solids, liquids, and gels with structures on the relevant size-scale. Funds were provide dby the NSF EPSCoR program ($300k). " The Microarray Center was upgraded with a new scanner for the Affymetrix Gene Chip system to allow use of newer high-density gene chips with funds provided through a recently awarded USDA grant. A new Nanodrop spectrophotometer was added to the facility this year, and is heavily used by the community. ($120k) " A new Sun Microsystems bioinformatics database server with 24 Terabyte of disk space is being installed in the Bioinformatics Center with funds provided by a DOE grant. This upgrade will greatly enhance the bioinformatics capacity of the Network. ($180k) 9) Partner institutions used INBRE funds to add the following research instrumentation: " Delaware State University upgraded its the campus-wide IT structure, and builds on recent membership in the Internet 2 consortium. To that end, DSU purchased a CISCO 6509 switch to be the heart of an upgraded high-bandwidth network with wireless capability in the Science Center. The University is providing four CISCO 4503 switches to control four of the planned six sub-networks. This capability will provide high-speed connectivity to departments and research facilities across the DSU campus. " Delaware Technical & Community College (DTCC) purchased equipment to improve instruction in the Allied Health program and in the Sciences. This equipment includes an EKG Cycloergometer. The state-of-the-art cycle ergometer is computer operated and controlled and allows for extremely reliable and reproducible results. The 12 lead EKG module, combined with metabolic gas analysis, allows DTCC students to run a complete cardio-respiratory evaluation of clients, and provides DTCC students with the opportunity to simulate the types of experiences they will have within their vocation and prepares them better for the workforce. In addition, DTCC is planning to purchase and install several pieces of laboratory equipment including a fraction collector for the Biotechnology lab and a digital camera for the microscope in the Anatomy & Physiology lab. Finally, chemical storage cabinets were purchased for the renovated Biology/Chemistry stockroom. " Wesley College purchased instrumentation to expand undergraduate research experiences. This instrumentation will provide analysis techniques previously unavailable as well as training and presentation tools to provide this information to a broader audience within Wesley.