The Analytical Ultracentrifugation facility will be heavily involved in the development and the application of methodology, hardware and software for advanced analytical ultracentrifugation. Optical and data acquisition system improvements will be applied to both absorption and interference optics of the new XL-A centrifuge. These innovations will have direct application to increasing the scope and power of this new second-generation centrifuge. Applications will deal largely with equilibrium sedimentation studies of macromolecular interactions with particular emphasis on hetero-association. This will also involve the development of software for data analysis as well as research strategies to optimize such studies. New technical developments will be engineered and applied to increase the accuracy and efficiency of velocity sedimentation measurements, a technique which did not receive high priority under the previous grant. These resources have been made available to the scientific community over the past three and a half years. The Facility has participated in or is still involved with 31 research projects (17 completed) involving over 100 combinations of macromolecular samples and experimental conditions. During the next five years this collaboration with academic and industrial researchers and the publication of the results of such research will continue to be the central focus of the Facility. The Facility also assists researchers to make use of the newly developed technology in their own laboratories by upgrading their instrumentation and computational methods. This transfer is promoted by presentations at national meetings and conferences, and by workshops held at the Facility for investigators, students, and technicians. This training, along with the distribution of software and of the schematics and construction diagrams for hardware, will constitute the heart of the technology-transfer mission of the Facility.
