This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. SCIENCE RESEARCH CORE The Arkansas INBRE proposes to continue its Science Research Core, which will comprise services offered by three scientific research facilities at two lead institutions. These core facilities will provide investigators throughout the state with access to the instrumentation and expertise needed for three key areas of modern biotechnology?proteomics, digital microscopy, and DNA damage and toxicology. These three areas were chosen because the technical expertise and, especially, the instrumentation of each facility are not commonly available, even in an average, well-funded research laboratory, particularly not at four-year PUIs. These three facilities were especially chosen to address the specific needs of the 13 Arkansas INBRE Project Leaders (see Table 11). With access to these technologies for specific studies, researchers can then pursue and extend research projects in their own laboratories. The use of these facilities should help researchers obtain necessary preliminary data to apply for extramural research funding. Arkansas INBRE support for the Science Research Core and its three facilities is primarily intended to guarantee access to these facilities by PUI investigators (both faculty and students). This support is not sufficient to completely sustain these facilities, which derive additional, more substantial support from other grant funding sources and from the institutions at which they are located (UAMS and UAF). The three facilities, described in detail below, have the goal of providing expertise and equipment for the following purposes: + Proteomics: To enable researchers to study protein structure and function using state-of-the-art instrumentation; + Digital Microscopy: To allow researchers to locate macromolecules within cells and tissues, thereby better assessing their function in normal and diseased states;and + DNA Damage and Toxicology: To allow researchers to incorporate DNA damage and toxicity analyses (as in cell injury and death) into their studies of normal and diseased cells and tissues. Each Science Research Core facility will also be committed to educating and training Arkansas INBRE faculty and students at both partner and non-partner PUIs, in sophisticated technologies specific to each facility. Hence, all facilities will provide workshops or demonstration sessions relevant to the instrumentation and expertise available. These offerings will be organized by leaders of all Science Research Core facilities and publicized by the Administrative Core statewide. The Science Research Core will also provide access to other Core Facilities located at the lead institutions, for example, DNA Sequencing and Flow Cytometry, for all researchers within the Arkansas INBRE. In addition, through the INBRE consortium, the Arkansas INBRE will network with other INBREs to obtain access to facilities that may not currently be available in Arkansas (see http://louisville.edu/research/genomics/content/microarray_services.shtml and letter of support from the directors of the Kentucky INBRE and the University of Louisville Microarray Facility, Louisville, KY). The Science Research Core is also committed to assisting both student and faculty participants in the Summer Mentored Research Fellowship Program (see Outreach Core), enabling summer fellows to become familiar with technologies that facilitate modern biomedical research and, ultimately, to participate more fully in the INBRE program. As evidence of this commitment, faculty investigators at non-partner PUIs have been using the current INBRE facilities (see below under each facility). Workshops offered during the summer introduce researchers from across the state to available, state-of-the-art technologies. All facilities within the Science Research Core will interact as needed with the Bioinformatics Core to provide for the needs of the Arkansas INBRE partner PUIs (see Objectives, Bioinformatics Core). At present, one of the most daunting aspects of biomedical research concerns data management and bioinformatics tools for analysis. For proteomics research, data collection for protein structure determination requires new information technologies (protein informatics) to analyze and interpret the data. Faculty associated with the Bioinformatics Core will be available to provide the requisite expertise for data analysis, including more conventional statistical analysis of all types of data and analysis of data generated by microarray or proteomics techniques.
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