This award provides funds to the Public Health Research Institute for the purchase or upgrade of a variety of instruments needed for the synthesis or analysis of proteins, and for a thermal cycler for synthesis of DNA using the polymerase chain reaction. The equipment will be used to help furnish a core facility that serves investigators involved in studies of a wide variety of biological problems. These include the mechanism of DNA uptake during DNA transformation and of site specific recombination, the role of protein-nucleic acid interactions in the virions of filamentous viruses, the mechanism of proton translocation in yeast, the regulation of sporulation in bacteria, and a number of other problems. The rapid advance of our understanding of a variety of biological processes has been due in no small part to the development of sophisticated and highly sensitive instruments for the synthesis, purification and analysis of proteins. The equipment purchased through this award will enable a group of solid investigators to pursue a variety of projects concerned with protein structure and function. Their rates of progress will be substantially augmented by the equipping of a core facility made possible through this award.
