The City University of New York (CUNY) is the nation's largest urban university. There are approximately 120 faculty in chemistry and biochemsitry. CUNY graduates -8% of the minority Ph.D.'s in these fields yearly. The Hunter College/CUNY Mass Spectrometry Facility currently collaborates with 25 laboratories throughout CUNY, and 10 laboratories at other educational institutions including 3 medical schools. There are no high resolution mass spectrometers in the CUNY system causing investigators to send samples outside, many times waiting considerable time in order to get their results. In addition, it is difficult to get outside laboratories to conduct non routine experiments. In order to fill this void, this proposal is requesting funding for a state-of-the-art HPLC Time-of-Flight (TOF) high resolution mass spectrometer system with various ionization sources (MALDI/ESI/APCI). The proposed system will serve a broad spectrum of NIH investigators at Hunter College and the City University of New York (CUNY) system (10 listed in this proposal). The instrumentation will provide empirical formula confirmations for small bioactive molecules and molecular weight confirmations of intact proteins and oligonucleotides. Analysis of protein digests in order to identify proteins and post translational modifications will also be performed. The instrumentation will be located in the CUNY Mass Spectrometry Facility at Hunter College and will be overseen by the facility director, a full-time Ph.D. chemist, who has successfully managed the facility for the last 10 years. Maintenance and supply costs beyond the warranty period will be paid for by user fees, a mechanism that has been successfully used in this facility for the last 7 years. The mass Spectrometry instrumentation requested will provide key scientific data to researchers in the chemical, biochemical and biological sciences. This data will be used to help elucidate chemical structure and study the molecular basis for disease.
