(Taken from application) This proposal seeks to establish an Analytical Core (AC) Project to serve the individual principal investigator projects by providing analytical methods development, sample service, and student training on the analytical instrumentation as their research programs develop. The specific projects will require metal determinations, sometimes as low as sub-ppb levels. They will also require sample services for polyaromatic hydrocarbons and similar substances, generally by mass spectrometry. The AC will serve these needs plus training and methods development needs as well. Personnel will be available through the core budget and depending on how each principal investigator wishes to proceed, samples will be run at modest costs or at no additional cost to that project except for supplies. Many of the individual proposals require methods development directed at elemental species, primarily As and Cr. It will be highly significant to know the particular metal species at various experimental points; e.g. experimental samplings from cell inoculation to cell mutagenesis or death. Likewise, it will be very useful to be able to determine the appearance or disappearance of the different metal species at various points in degradation processes, including bacterial degradation. This knowledge will enhance our ability to better assign the molecular roles that heavy metal species play in mutagenesis or cell degradation. Further, several of the projects will be enhanced as the AC provides student training, particularly on major instrumentation. Such training will further enable these research groups to more seamlessly meet their program objectives, plus it will provide critically important learning experiences on modern complex analytical instrumentation: a highly worthwhile complement to the Training Core, also a part of this Program Project. Since for many years we have been involved with training students from other groups to use instrumentation, expanding and formalizing a training function is a logical and next step for the AC.
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