This award is for the acquisition of a mass spectrometer (a triple quadrupole LC/MS/MS system) and a nitrogen generator for trace level structure-based screening and quantitative profiling of nonvolatile metabolites and reaction products. This system will enable sensitive and high-throughput non-target (metabolomics) and target metabolite analyses. Biology is moving toward a new and interdisciplinary paradigm of systems biology, which seeks to replace the one gene, pathway, or physiological process-at-a-time approaches to understanding complex biological systems with a more efficient and holistic concept. This approach requires the production and datamining of comprehensive and high quality data sets describing dynamic changes in genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome. The instruments acquired through this award will allow the investigators to take advantage of the great technological advances that have been made in methods for analysis of metabolites, including the global approach termed metabolomics, largely due to improvements in Mass Spectrometry in recent years.
This mass spectrometer was chosen because it is user friendly, for use by undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctorals and faculty. Individuals trained in mass spectrometer operation, analytical method design, and data interpretation will represent a good gender balance and come from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and educational backgrounds. This is due to recruitment infrastructure on campus and a group of participating faculty who are culturally and ethnically diverse and who seek to train a diverse group of students. Training sessions and workshops will introduce students to the problem-solving power of mass spectrometry, which is one of the most dynamic fields of analytical chemistry. Use of these instruments will accelerate research and improve understanding of gene functions, responses of plants, animals, and microbes to changing environments, and the chemistry governing interactions between organisms.
