Access to modern instrumentation is critical to the success of this COBRE. Investigators at MSU have been quite successful in obtaining shared major research instrumentation grants (primarily NSF) to obtain state-of the- art equipment needed for life and materials science research (1-6). Specifically, the P.l. and co-Is for this COBRE have received awards to purchase cell sorting, imaging and analysis tools to meet the needs of our biomedical research faculty. At present, the relatively small size of the biomedical research enterprise at MSU does not utilize the full capacity of several of these particular instruments or of the technical staff who operate them. We expect this situation to change as biomedical research grows at MSU and biomedical research faculty become more competitive: That growth will allow COBRE funding to be offset with user fees to help sustain these operations. By funding several new users, their laboratory staff and collaborators, and the acquisition of preliminary data leading to competitive funding, this COBRE will significantly augment the income of these facilities, allowing more efficient and timely replacements/upgrades of equipment thus allowing our investigators to be competitive with investigators at larger institutions. Components of this model have been successfully implemented, resulting in research faculty success and research institute growth at MSU (e.g. Institute for Imaging & Analytical Technologies, Institute for Genomics, Biotechnology & Biocomputing). From a COBRE sustainability perspective to promote collaborative interactive efforts among researchers with complementary backgrounds, skills and expertise and to compete independently for external peer-reviewed center or program project grant support, Core C is significant as it provides a successful model to do so in the MSU environment. Taking advantage of the long successful history of a productive service center with a successful business model will ensure that resources are available for the COBRE Junior Investigators to develop the thematic multidisciplinary research focus of this COBRE proposal into a research center.
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