This proposal requests funds to support two distinct, yet highly interacting, biological facility centers: the Center for Prokaryotic Genome Analysis (CPGA) and the Center for Molecular Phylogeny (CMP). The CPGA is being created to facilitate the acquisition and analysis of the DNA sequences determined for the genomes of selected archaebacteria as well as an eubacterial photosynthetic organism. The Center will be interdisciplinary, its scientists being drawn from molecular biology, microbial physiology, computer science, information theory, and engineering. The Center's activities will have a major impact on the understanding of prokaryotic evolution, molecular biology, and physiology. The Center will also be heavily involved in developing computer.based systems for the handling of sequence data. The CMP is an interdisciplinary group whose members share interests in evolutionary biology and use biochemical and molecular biological methods to examine the phylogenies of diverse sets of organisms. In addition to nucleic aid sequencing, core members have nationally recognized epertise in other biochemical methods, especially electrophoresis and immunology. The two groups have two areas of common interest..evolution and the mechanics and methodology of sequence analysis. The focus of these facilities will be on genome mapping, gene sequencing, and the determination of phylogenies, and examination of the sequence evolution of ribosomal RNA genes. The instrumentation requested will enable the University of Illinois to become a center for excellence in molecular evolution.
