The Molecular Biology Core Laboratory (MBCL) at Case Western Reserve University has been in operation for the past 10 years. The guiding principle has been to provide state-of-the-art scientific capabilities to the research community of Cleveland with special emphasis to the following supporting groups: CFAR, Cancer Center and kin Research Center. The MBCL is house in space renovated in 1990 specially for its use and offers the following services: protein sequencing, amino acid analysis, DNA synthesis, DNA sequencing, phosphorimaging, scanning laser densitometry, biofermentation, and fluorimaging. The instrumentation for the MBCL has been obtained through shared instrumentation grants (NIH, and VA), private foundations and center grants (CFAR). In the past five years, the MBCL laboratory has purchase about $500,000 worth of new instrumentation which in some instances has been to replace old instruments (DNA synthesizer, protein sequencers), but in most instances to provide new methodologies. In the current application, funds are requested to purchase a Pharmacia Biosensor BIAcore. At the present time, most of the costs of the MBCL are covered by user fees which are established for each services to reflect the real cost of that service (maintenance contract, effort of the MBCL staff, chemicals and upgrades of hardware or software as appropriate). The MBCL has been in operation for a considerable length of time and is used to establishing rates for user fees. These rates are reviewed at least semi-annually and in most instances, the rates are either maintained or reduced. It is the practice of the MBCL to have each service pay for itself and not have any one service require support through others. If the need for a specific service is ever deemed too minimal, the service may be considered for elimination. Key AIDS-related projects which have used the facility include: Comparing HIV 1 and RSV Proteases (Jonathan Leis, Ph.D CA52047); Analysis of amino acid sequences and glycosylation patterns of the V3 region of gp120 (Susan Eshleman, Ph.D. HD34348); Crystallization of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase/tRNAlys, complexes (Stuart F.J. Le Grice AI31147); Protective and diagnostic Mycobacterial antigens (R. Wallis, AI24298).
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