Core--Environmental Molecular Analysis

分子技术已经成为更深入地理解复杂过程和 微生物群落的相互作用，对于从机理上理解 生物修复过程。正在不断开发新的工具来帮助实现这一目标，但他们的 在与环境相关的条件下应用和优化微生物研究并不容易。 我们的总体目标是使用和加强这些技术，以了解微生物如何对 现场环境变化，而不是简单地作为实验室的纯培养。这最好是由一个 支持具有交互组件的核心。我们将开发新的工具和 发现与多芳香族化合物降解有关的新基因。此过程将需要 支持各种使能技术，其中最核心的技术在 支持核心。这项核心建议的具体目标是在三个相关领域提供必要的支持： (1)微阵列的开发和增强；(2)聚合酶链式反应产物的自动化生物信息学分析 序列和生物降解基因簇，以及(3)高通量筛选和测序 环境克隆人。该项目汇集了一个多学科研究团队的力量， 每个人都在自己的专业领域采取行动。微生物生态中心(CME)和 密歇根州立大学土木工程与环境工程系开发了一种微阵列 将支持我们提议的基因组分析的平台。芝加哥商品交易所的微生物信息学部门管理着 核糖体数据库项目，并开发了一个生物信息学平台，用于序列分析和其他 数据分析工具。罗格斯大学农业和环境生物技术中心 开发了高通量筛选设备，重点是筛选培养物和克隆。这些 三个组成部分将形成一个相互作用的三合一，支持环境研究项目，并将 与生物医学信息学核心和毒理学在一般层面上交流战略和概念 使用基因和微阵列技术的项目。

Molecular technologies have become key to a more in-depth understanding of the complex processes and interactions of microbial communities, and are especially important to a mechanistic understanding of bioremediation processes. New tools are constantly being developed to aid this objective but their application and optimization to microbial research under environmentally relevant conditions is not easy. Our overall goal is to use and enhance these technologies for understanding how microbes react to environmental changes in situ rather than simply as laboratory pure cultures. This can best be done by a support core with interacting components. We will develop new tools and discover new genes involved in degradation of polyaromatic compounds. This process will require the support of a variety of enabling technologies, the most central of which are provided and optimized in this support core. The specific aims of this core proposal are to provide needed support in three related areas: (1) microarray development and enhancement, (2) automated bioinformatic analyses of PCR product sequences and biodegradative gene clusters, and (3) high throughput screening and sequencing of environmental clones. The project brings together the strengths of a multidisciplinary team of researchers, each one acting in their own areas of expertise. The Center for Microbial Ecology (CME) and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University has developed a microarray platform that will support our proposed genomic analyses. CME's Microbial Informatics Group manages the Ribosomal Database Project and has developed a bioinformatic platform for sequence analyses and other data analysis tools. The Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment at Rutgers University has developed a high throughput screening facility with an emphasis on screening cultures and clones. These three components will form an interacting triad supporting the environmental research projects, and will exchange at a general level strategies and concepts with the Biomedical Informatics core and toxicology projects that use genetic and microarray array technologies.