Ultraviolet and Visible Light Spectrophotometer for Molecular Quantitation at the Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics (CBFG)

Project Title: Ultraviolet and Visible Light Spectrophotometer for Molecular Quantitation at the Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics (CBFG)

Project Lead's Name: Andor Kiss

Email: kissaj@miamioh.edu

Phone: (513) 529-4280

Please Choose the Primary Affiliation: CAS

Are There Other Project Team Members? Yes

Other Project Team Member: Xiaoyun Deng

Other Team Member Email Address: dengx1@miamioh.edu

Brief description of project: The project request is for the acquisition of an UV-VIS spectrophotometer for the purposes of quantifying nucleic acids and proteins in solution. Although we have two Nanodrop Instruments (for very small volumes), in many cases, particularly quantification of proteins is difficult on the small scale as in many cases, the Nanodrop cannot distinguish between scattering and absorbance. We are also asking for a temperature controlled (Peltier unit) sipper module to be able to measure proteins eluted from traditional large scale size exclusion columns, necessary for the scale up of our protein expression work. This project/instrument acquisition will complement the recently acquired Eppendorf ThermoMixers for recombinant protein expression.

Does this project focus on graduate student education or graduate student life? Yes

If yes, please explain: The split between graduate student usage and undergraduate usage is about 25% undergraduate and 75% graduate student usage - although these numbers are a little fuzzy due to projects such as DUOS wherein both graduate students (PhD) & undergraduates work together. Graduate students will benefit by being able to accomplish their graduate work, publish their findings with their PI and contribute directly to new funding. Undergraduates will gain contemporary knowledge about current technologies preparing them for graduate, biomedical or employment.

Describe the problem you are attempting to solve and your approach for solving that problem. The problem is accurate quantitation of proteins, from large scale expression to quantitation of larger aggregates of proteins, our current CBFG instrument does not do well with these types of samples. Additionally, we do not have a sipper unit/flow cell in either the Department of Biology and/or Microbiology, which is necessary to process hundreds of samples in a quick and efficient manner, such as the numbers that we will generate from expression studies. In particular, this would benefit the following PIs (Dabney-Smith, Corrigan, Actis, Bellman, Morgan-Kiss, Findlay, Wilson, Lee/Costa).

The criteria state that technology fee projects should benefit students in innovative and/or significant ways. How would you describe the innovation and/or significance of your project? The success of the project will be in the increased usage of the instrumentation and the increased competitiveness of our undergraduates and graduates in terms of their marketable skill sets. In addition, the increased success of our PIs to obtain external funding will be increased. The innovation of our project will be reflected in accelerated production of larger scale recombinant protein expression. As we are seeking to significantly improved this capacity for recombinant protein work, including synthetic protein design, this instrument will compliment these endeavours. Additionally, the UV/VIS spectrophotometer is an essential and standard part of laboratories that engage in protein expression work, it is now becoming an impediment to research at the CBFG to not have this instrument available.

How will you assess the project? We will assess the project by recording the instrumentation usage via a logbook. We've had increasing interest and requests for a UV/VIS capable spectrophotometer for protein based work. In addition, many of our undergraduate classes will be able to make use of this high quality analytical instrument when studying protein expression and/or protein mutagenesis studies.

Have you applied for and/or received Tech Fee awards in past years? Yes

If funded, what results did you achieve? We've been funded for (1) a high powered computer workstation (hexadeca core AMD Opteron with 128 GiB ECC RAM) and CLC Genomics Software, and (2) a Covaris M220 Ultrasonicator. (3) A Sage PippinPrep DNA fragment size recovery instrument for optimal recovery of fractionated DNA samples for next generation sequencing library construction. All three have had a large impact on our ability . The computer workstation sees daily use for the last four years. The ultrasconicator has been essentially in fostering the study of epigenetics with the advent of ChIP-Seq NGS studies, and the PippinPrep has enabled highly efficient recover of fragmented samples from the Covaris ultrasonicator.

Did you submit a final report? Yes 

What happens to the project in year two and beyond? Will there be any ongoing costs such as software or hardware maintenance, supplies, staffing, etc.? How will these be funded? The CBFG is asking for one-time acquisition cost for the instrument. Our facility has the space and two full time employees that will help maintain and train users on the instrument usage. Our annual budget - derived from our charge-backs from users performing Sanger Sequencing - will more than cover any incidental costs, or future repair costs. Users will be charged for consumables as they consume them. This model has been in place at the CBFG for the past 12 years and has had the full support of the three past Deans of CAS, including the current Dean.

Budget: Hardware

Hardware Title(s) & Vendor(s): UV-VIS Spectrophotometer

Hardware Costs: $4044.91

What is the total budget amount requested? $4044.91

Comments: Please find a quote from VWR attached.