The Center for Fluorescence Spectroscopy (CFS) has provided time-resolved measurements to scientists on this campus since 1988, resulting in over 200 peer-reviewed publications. This instrumentation is now obsolete or nonfunctional. NIH-funded principal investigators (PIs) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) have a scientific need for a state-of-the-art fluorescence lifetime spectrofluorometer to support and enhance their NIH funded research. The requested instrument is a modern recently developed computer controlled spectrofluorometer which performs automated time-resolved measurements. The FluoTime 300 Easy Tau is a new instrument from PicoQuant designed to make time-resolved measurements easily available to biological researchers. This instrument will be located in and managed by the Center for Fluorescence Spectroscopy (CFS) at UMB and will be available for PIs throughout UMB. This instrument will provide automated collection of fluorescence intensity, fluorescence polarization (FP), anisotropy decays, time- resolved emission spectra, decay-associated spectra, and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). At present we have limited capabilities for time-resolved measurements. We have one LED-based frequency- domain (FD) instrument with very low sensitivity and one time-domain instrument which uses only optical filters for wavelength selection. These instruments can only be operated by spectroscopists and cannot support the demand for time-resolved measurements of UMB. The CFS has extensive software for time-resolved fluorescence using the frequency-domain method. With support from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology this valuable software will be modified for TCSPC measurements. The School of Medicine guarantees support for the service contract for five years in the event of a shortage from user fees. The PicoQuant FT300 will be used 100% of the time by 10 major users supported by 14 NIH grants and by 8 minor users supported by 3 NIH grants.
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