This equipment will be used for several research projects, including, in particular, (i) the investigation of growth and protein synthesis rates during the cell cycle of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, (ii) the study of protein synthesis and secretion in mammalian cells, and (iii) the evaluation of feeding and growth rates during the cell cycle of Tetrahymena pyriformis. The rotor equipment will be used (i) in combination with fixed asynchronously grown cell populations for the preparation of size fractions of cells for the determination of their macromolecular composition with conventional techniques, and (ii) in combination with viable asynchronous cell populations for the generation and subsequent study of synchronized cell populations. These studies will complement ongoing investigations that are carried out on synchronous cell populations using flow cytometry as an analytical tool, and that have suggested the occurance of several cell cycle dependent dynamic phenomena that are highly significant for the use of eukaryotic organisms for engineering purposes.
