Tool kit for quantifying gene expression

工程特定的细胞行为是一系列重要的环境和健康生物技术问题的共同目标，如组织工程，生物修复，植物纤维工程的酶应用和转化为可发酵糖和代谢工程。细胞表型和行为由基因谱和最终在任何特定时间在细胞中表达的蛋白质谱决定。了解基因表达如何在不同的生物条件下变化，以及基因表达如何被工程化以特异性地调节不同的生物过程，对于解决所有这些生物技术问题至关重要。实时定量聚合酶链反应（qPCR）是一种非常宝贵的细胞工程分析技术，使研究人员能够在暴露于特定条件后对细胞样品（哺乳动物、微生物和真菌细胞）中的基因丰度（DNA）和表达水平（RNA）进行定量测量。该提案要求为两台定量聚合酶链反应（qPCR）机器提供资金，以满足我们名为BioZone的新合作中心对qPCR分析的非常高的需求以及这些分析对生物工程研究的定量价值拟议的机器将扩展qPCR功能我们的研究小组可以通过三种关键方式：i）它将解决我们目前面临的能力有限的问题，并显着增加这种技术对在生物区工作的大量（100+）HQP的可用性，ii）所要求的BIORAD机器将使我们能够进行新的实验，因为它提供了最先进的灵敏度，准确度和精确度，和选项工作与多达5个不同的通道，使多路复用和iii）有额外的机器将提供备份的老化和联合国，可靠的机器，我们目前在生物区。

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.