This consortium of investigators concentrated in the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo seeks to obtain a 12 Tesla Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer (FT-ICR-MS) with electrospray ionization and imaging matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) sources to augment several projects which have important implications for human health. The projects included have broad application at both the level of biomedical implantable devices, basic biomedical science, and at the level of individual diseases, including autism, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and atherosclerosis. Several of the investigators plan to use the proposed instrumentation to obtain information on primary amino acid sequence and sites of covalent modification within proteins. To obtain such critical structural information, an electron transfer dissociation (ETD) module is requested. Other uses include high mass accuracy measurements combined with tandem mass spectrometry for metabolite identification and the examination of non-covalent nucleic acid-ligand and protein-ligand interactions. In addition, an imaging MALDI source is requested to perform molecular interrogation of surfaces such as electrode materials being developed for implantable biomedical devices and tumor cells which have taken up chemotherapeutic drugs. The high magnetic field provides numerous advantages in molecular identification and structural determination by mass spectrometry, including: improved mass resolving power and accuracy, greater spectrum acquisition speed, a higher upper mass limit, longer ion trapping time, higher ion kinetic energy, greater number of trapped ions (hence lower detection limits) and decreased peak coalescence. The modern external ion injection system (using multipole ion guides and an ion funnel) coupled with improvements in FT-ICR detection electronics provide greatly improved sensitivity over existing high resolution mass spectrometers at the University at Buffalo. The inclusion of a 12 Tesla FT-ICR-MS will fill a gap in protein identification and molecular interrogation of surfaces currently lacking in Western New York, and will enhance the already diverse bioinformatics capabilities (NMR, x-ray crystallography, and molecular modeling) in this region.
This application requests a state-of-the-art Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer for the Instrumentation Center in the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo to assist researchers there and their collaborators. The proposed instrumentation will benefit existing and pending NIH-supported research programs which require different elements of the proposed instrument (e.g., high resolution and tandem mass spectrometry for structural elucidation, high sensitivity, molecular imaging) and will greatly increase the likelihood that these research programs achieve and exceed the aims of their individual efforts. It is also expected that by substantially upgrading the mass spectrometry instrumentation infrastructure in the Dept. of Chemistry, new directions for these projects will emerge that have been difficult to pursue with existing instrumentation available at the University at Buffalo.
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