This proposal requests funds for the purchase of an ABI 7900HT Sequence Detection System in support of the Department of Pediatrics Molecular Biology Core Laboratory. The origin of the laboratory and one of its continued functions is to be part of the Children's Health Research Center (CHRC) funded under the auspices of the NICHD. With the remodeling of the Feigin Center exclusively for research, the new Molecular Biology Core Laboratory is now catering to the needs of not only the Scholars and Mentors of the CHRC and other researchers based in the Department of Pediatrics; but also to the Baylor scientific community at large. The laboratory continues to operate as a charge back unit, billing investigators' accounts via the office of Grants & Accounts at Baylor College of Medicine. Business with regards to DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis has increased more than double since the move of the core lab to the Feigin Center in 2003. Nevertheless, there has been an increasing demand on the core lab to include real time PCR as a service, which ultimately resulted in this shared instrument grant application. Real time PCR is a profoundly robust technique that is currently used extensively by the researchers for a variety of samples. We have identified 18 users who are independently NIH funded investigators. The 7 major users have a need of 227,000 reactions for their gene expression analyses. Our minor users will need ~24,700 reactions for gene expression analysis. On the basis of our investigators' anticipation, there is a demand for ~251,700 samples in the first year of operating the new instrument. Additionally, we are cognizant of the need of SNP analysis by the users, which diversifies the field of application of the instrument. A total of 27,000 SNP analyses are anticipated yearly. The laboratory will be operated under the auspices of the administrative structure of the Department of Pediatrics and will be managed by Dr. Partha Sen with administrative oversight from Dr. Morey Haymond, Program Director, CHRC and Vice Chair for Res. for the Dept of Pediatrics, Baylor Coll. of Medicine. ? ? ?
