This award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation Program will help the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation acquire an Elemental Analyzer. This instrument will provide fundamental analytical support for researchers in the Department of Chemistry including synthetic, bioorganic and analytical chemists involved in research projects that include: synthesis of complex natural products, design and synthesis of complex organic and organometallic compounds, catalytic antibodies, design and synthesis of enzyme inhibitors, synthesis of peptides, oligonucleotides and their analogs, isolation of enzymes, modification of natural enzymes, synthesis of artifical enzymes, and the development of new synthetic technology. Departments at Scripps (Immunology, Molecular and Experimental Medicine, Molecular Biology and Neuropharmacology) and outside of Scripps will also have access to this facility through an already established mass spectrometry user facility. %%% Elemental analysis combined with mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance and x-ray crystallography can provide sufficient information to allow for the unequivocal determination of molecular structure. The distinctive characteristics of this technology include its ability to provide unambiguous compositional data consistently and quickly for virtually all of the numerous classes of organic materials, independent of the physical characteristics of a sample (i.e., crystal size and the stability of the molecular ion). In addition, elemental analysis is the only method that can evaluate sample purity. The unique and fundamental information provided by elemental analysis facilitates research in the chemical and biological sciences. This is particularly true in structural, synthetic and bioorganic chemistry.
