(Research Support Core - Morris, Stromberg) The Research Support Core (RSC) of the University of Kentucky Superfund Research Center (UK-SRC) provides vital access to expertise, research resources, and state-of-the-art instrumentation to researchers engaged in all aspects of the component biomedical and environmental science research projects. The RSC enhances the productivity, quality and consistency of these projects by providing a formalized mechanism for access to expert investigators and professional staff and by enabling efficient use of expensive and sophisticated instrumentation that would otherwise be beyond the capabilities of individual laboratories to acquire and support. To reflect the evolving needs of the participating investigators, the RSC has been reorganized to combine activities in systems biology and bioinformatics/ biostatistics into a single """"""""Quantitative Biology"""""""" component that provides biostatistics support for experimental design and computational infrastructure for data management, analysis and sharing. Our analytical capabilities have been greatly expanded and now constitute a """"""""Bioanalytical"""""""" component that provides technologies for quantitation and structural analysis of toxins, nutritional protectants and markers and mediators of oxidative stress and inflammation. In addition to their importance to the biomedical component projects, these analytical capabilities are critical for validation of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) sensor/capture technologies, monitoring mechanisms of PCB detoxification and remediation and evaluating toxicities associated with these approaches that are being developed by the non-biomedical projects. The RSC offers an additional range of analytical services that are of specific value to the biomedical projects, is engaged in UK-SRC driven discovery research to identify biomarkers of PCB exposure and nutritional and lifestyle-based interventions that protect from these toxins, and participates the full repertoire of UK-SRC translational and training/educational functions.
Polychorinated biphenyls pose a significant public health hazard. Researchers studying the effects of these toxins on cells and animals and devising methods and strategies for nutritional protection from these toxic effects or to sense and degrade these toxins require access to state of the art instrumentation and expertise for experiment design, data acquisition, storage and analysis. The Research Support Core addresses this critical need of our Superfund Basic Research Program investigators.
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