Purchase of a ProteomeLab XL-I analytical ultracentrifuge (AU) from Beckman-Coulter is proposed. This instrument will explicitly serve the research programs of four major and five minor users from a range of departments across the campus. The development of new AU projects is also anticipated from a cadre of additional investigators from the strong, largely NIH-funded life sciences community at this institution. While multiple investigators at this institution perform analytical ultracentrifugation experiments, this work has been exclusively performed at off-site fee for service facilities or through collaboration because there is no instrument available at this university or anywhere else in the Nashville vicinity. The closest instrument is located at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, more than 200 miles away. Use of off-site fee for service facilities is sufficient for specific well-defined research projects by a limited number of investigators. However, the costs grow rapidly as the number of experiments needed increases. Moreover, some samples are not amendable to transportation off site, and routine analysis and project development is inhibited when it is necessary to contact outside groups to perform the service. The availability of a local AU facility combined with a ready mechanism to advertise the resource and work with interested scientists through the Center for Structural Biology will have a broad positive impact on NIH-sponsored basic and translational research at our institution.
The availability of an analytical ultracentrifuge will mean a dramatic leap forward in the ability of medical and biological researchers at Vanderbilt University to comprehensively address questions about the roles of specific proteins in normal cells and their mis-function in disease states. Analytical ultracentrifugation is broadly viewed as an important tool for characterization of biological macromolecules, fueling research programs in a variety of areas including Biochemistry, Cancer Biology, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Immunology, Microbiology, Pharmacology, and Structural Biology. The availability of AU on campus will significantly enhance the productivity of the research groups in the Vanderbilt life sciences community, which is largely devoted to studies of human health and development of therapeutic strategies to combat disease.
