A joint Mass Spectrometry Facility has been created by the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The objectives of the Facility are to support and promote chemical research and teaching in mass spectrometry at UNC. The Facility will provide the capability for identification and structural characterization of many different classes of compounds. Specific aims of some of the projects of the major users are to gain insight into mechanisms responsible for the activation of polycyclic aromatics to ultimate carcinogens; to understand sterol metabolic pathways in the plant parasites; to synthesize nongenetic proteins; to characterize intermediates in the biosynthesis of ecodysteroids in insects and to identify neuropeptides controlling insect development; to understand the role of -carboxyglutamyl (Gla) residues in blood coagulation processes; to characterize potent enzyme inhibitors and to separate and identify products of chlorination and ionization of humics in water. For these purposes, an mass spectrometer is needed that is capable of high- resolution and accurate mass measurements, chemical ionization, collisional activation ionization, collisional activation, gas- chromatography and fast-atom-bombardment. The most appropriate instrument is a hybrid-mass spectrometer.
