Tool kit for quantifying gene expression

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Engineering specific cellular behaviour is a common objective for a range of important environmental and health biotechnology problems such as tissue engineering, bioremediation, enzyme applications for plant fibre engineering and conversion to fermentable sugars and metabolic engineering. Cell phenotype and behaviour are determined by the profile of genes and ultimately the profile of proteins being expressed in a cell at any particular time. Understanding how gene expression varies in different biological conditions and how gene expression can be engineered to specifically modulate different biological processes is critical for addressing all of these biotechnology problems. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction or qPCR is an invaluable analytical technique for cellular engineering that enables researchers to make quantitative measurements of gene abundance (DNA) and expression level (RNA) in cellular samples (mammalian, microbial and fungal cells) after exposure to specific conditions. This proposal requests the funds for two quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) machines to meet the very high demand for qPCR analyses and the quantitative value of these analyses for bioengineering research in our new collaborative centre called BioZone The proposed machines will expand the qPCR functionality available to our research groups in three key ways: i) It will solve the limited capacity problem we are currently facing and significantly increase the availability of this technique to the large number (100+) HQP working in biozone, ii) the requested BIORAD machine will allow us to conduct novel experiments since it offers state-of-the-art sensitivity, accuracy and precision, and the option to work with up to 5 different channels enabling multiplexing and iii) having additional machines will provide back-up for the aging and un-reliable machine we currently have in biozone.