This award will assist the College of Chemistry at the University of California Berkeley in the purchase of a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer equipped with electro- spray ionization capabilities and interfaced liquid chromatograph. The instrument is needed by members of the Department of Chemistry and will also provide mass spectroscopic services for the Department of Molecular Biology. Research areas supported by the acquisition of this instrument are: 1) Structure determination of protein-bound pigments. 2) Analysis of charged high molecular weight fullerene derivatives. 3) Design and synthesis of new classes of synthetic biopolymers. 4) Linkage position determination of metal-coordinated oligosaccharides. 5) Site specific incorporation of unnatural amino acids in proteins. 6) Analysis of densely charged poly-onium compounds. 7) Preparation of peptides with defined secondary structure. 8) Structure determination of transcription factors. 9) Structure determination of RNA molecules. %%% A mass spectrometer is an instrument used to measure the precise molecular weight of a molecule. The electrospray device is a way to volatilize the sample so that it may be introduced into the mass spectrometer. This information is needed so that the chemical composition and, sometimes, the molecular structure of newly synthesized compounds may be determined. An instrument of this description is required in the Berkeley facility because the current user needs cannot be meet with the existing equipment.
