Funds are requested for 50% of the cost of creating the University of Wisconsin-Madison Facility for Biophysics Instrumentation. This campus facility would be part of a $30 million expansion of the Department of Biochemistry. The facility would house six major instruments for the study of the complexation, conformation, and structure of biological and other macromolecules. These instruments are a MicroCal isothermal titration calorimeter, Calorimetry Sciences differential scanning calorimeter, Beckman analytical ultracentrifuge, Aviv circular dichroism spectrometer, Nicolet Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, and Pharmacia surface plasmon resonance detector. In addition, an Instrumentation Specialist would be hired to provide technical assistance to students, staff, and faculty on the installation, use, and maintenance of the requested instruments. The six principal users of the requested instrumentation are faculty members who use biophysical methods to study biopolymers and their interactions. These faculty reside in four divisions of the university- -Biochemistry, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Pharmacy. They have active collaborations, routinely share equipment and ideas, and participate in common training and degree programs. Together, they would manage the operations of the proposed core facility. The major users of the requested instruments would be the approximately 100 students and staff being trained in the laboratories of the primary users. In addition, the requested instruments would greatly enhance the research and training efforts of ten secondary users. The laboratories of all primary and secondary users are within two city blocks of the proposed facility. Further, it is envisioned that the usage and hence the impact of the facility would soon broaden well beyond the research groups of the primary and secondary users. The need for the requested instrumentation is extreme. Physical approaches to the analysis of biological systems depend heavily on instrumentation. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison now have the ability to produce biomolecules on a large scale, and to perform limited physical analyses on these molecules. Yet, no isothermal titration calorimeters, no differential scanning calorimeters, no analytical ultracentrifuges, and no surface plasmon resonance detectors exist on any campus of the University of Wisconsin. The Madison campus has two antiquated circular dichroism spectrometers and only three Fourier transform infrared spectrometers, each of which is inaccessible to the primary and secondary users. This proposal is intended to address this crippling lack of modern biophysical instrumentation.
