Incubator shaker for microbe growth

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Pathogens come in many forms and affect humans directly, by making us sick, as well as indirectly, by making the plants and animals we harvest sick. In order to fight pathogens we must understand them.  A key way to gain this knowledge is to determine their genome sequence.  This provides the blueprint of how the pathogen functions and provides us with a means to determine the mechanisms of pathogenesis.  Barry Saville, who has been instrumental in the annotation of the genome of the fungal pathogen Ustilago maydis has just joined the faculty at Trent University and, for this application, has teamed up with Craig Bunetti, who had a major role in the determination of the genome sequence of the tumorigenic poxvirus Yaba Monkey Tumor Virus.   With the genome sequences of the respective pathogens in hand both researchers are determining the functions of identified genes.  This process has an absolute requirement for the growth of microbes in large volumes.  In the Saville research this is because he works with a fungus that must be grown in large quantities to provide inoculum to test pathogenesis.  His research entails deleting and mutating specific genes in the pathogen and then determining the affect that these mutations have on fungus' growth and ability to infect its host, corn. In the Brunetti laboratory this is because determination of viral gene function requires expressing viral proteins in host cells from vectors produced in bacteria as well as the characterization of these proteins in vitro following their production in fungal cultures. The growth of fungi for pathogenesis assays and bacteria and fungi for vector and protein production must be strictly controlled in terms of temperature and aeration. Because of this, and the capacity required, it is essential that both researchers have access to the incubated shaker requested.  In fact without this incubator they will be unable to continue research already funded by NSERC. The requested incubator is also essential for training people in pathogen research and the sharing of this resource provides a cost effective way to gain an understanding of pathogens, increasing our chances of defending against them.