This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The RI-INBRE Centralized Research Core Facility is in its sixth year of providing research and training support to the Network participants and the Rhode Island biomedical research community. During the current grant period more than 55 research groups used the Facility, with an average quarterly cumulative frequency of 1,012 usages. The Facility users consisted of 30 faculty, 23 postdoctoral fellows, 65 graduate students, and 35 undergraduate students. Usage of the Centralized Research Core Facility has resulted in one published abstract and twenty-two publications acknowledging use of the facility over the past year. The Facility staff provided training to all new users of the facility and provided consultations for the use of various technologies in their research projects. In addition, the staff represented the Facility at the Northeast Regional Life Sciences Core Directors Meeting in Burlington, Vermont, and the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facility Meeting in Memphis, Tennessee. They also continued to participate in teaching various techniques in the undergraduate and graduate laboratory courses offered by the College of Pharmacy. These courses are designed to provide both theoretical and hands-on experience to students in using the Facility's equipment. Throughout the year, several instructional seminars and training workshops were organized in collaboration with the instrument manufacturers. The topics included: The Digital ProteomeChip, a Technology for Mass Spec Sample Preparation and Analysis;ECL-Plex Multiplex Fluorescent Quantitative Western Blotting;and Advances in Flash Chromatography Technique. New equipment acquired this year included a GloMax-96 microplate luminometer with dual injectors, a CombiFlash chromatography system and Nano DSC system with capillary cell, and FAS-3 software for flow cytometery data analysis. Also, the DNA array system and the Flow cytometery system were upgrade. Since the participating institutions continue to contribute funds towards maintaining the Facility, the equipment and resources were made available to researchers from these institutions at no cost. A total of 119 posters were printed with non-RI-INBRE participants paying a modest fee to cover the cost of consumables. In the future, seminars on the following: Biomarkers discovery, The LabChip system for protein, DNA and RNA analysis, and xCELLigence system for cellular analysis are planned. We collected instrument recommendations from RI-INBRE investigators for future purchases via e-mail communications and also through the survey conducted at the winter retried in January 2009. Overall, the usage of the Core Facility instrumentation and its consultative services continues to increase.
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