Funding is requested for the purchasing of several instruments which will be part of Shared Cloning/Sequencing Research Facility (SCSRF) serving the research community at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, and surrounding institutions in the state of Oklahoma, including the University of Oklahoma's Norman Campus, Oklahoma State University and others. The instruments in this Research Facility are intended to support the research work of more than thirty investigators who are listed as coinvestigators of this application. The concept of the facility is to strengthen the instrumentation of medical research at the molecular level, primarily in molecular biology, protein studies, and enzymology. Excellent shared instrumentation is already present at the SCSRF, which provides instrumentations for DNA synthesis, peptide synthesis, protein microsequencing, molecular biology data base and computation, monoclonal antibody production, and computer graphic display of protein crystal structures. Currently requested instruments and the needs for them are briefly summarized below: 1. A Beckman System Gold Amino Acid Analyzer - The existing instrument at the Facility is old, insensitive, and unreliable. A replacement is needed. 2. An Applied Biosystem 380B-02 DNA Synthesizer - The existing instrument at the Facility is used to near capacity. The expansion of the research activity on this campus requires a second instrument. 3. A JASCO J-600 Spectropolarimeter - New capability to monitor for the conformation of recombinant proteins is needed. 4. An Atago Bussan Co. Stopped Flow Fast Kinetic apparatus - New capability is needed for enzymology studies, especially for comparative studies of recombinant enzyme mutants. 5. A Technology Resources MC1000 Automated Gel Scanner - New capability is needed for monitoring proteins in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis.
