This award provides funds to aid in the purchase of a variety of equipment items to be used for biotechnology research by members of the zoology and biochemistry departments at Iowa State University. Equipment includes a state of the art imaging device for detection and analysis of radioactively-labelled nucleic acids and proteins, a device for densitometry of stained-gels and autoradiograms, equipment for synthesis and separation of DNA oligomers, a computer workstation for data analysis and several other items. The equipment will be housed in the nucleic acid facility of the new Biotechnology Center. Advances in basic research in Biotechnology, including studies in molecular biology and cell biology, have depended heavily on the development of instrumentation such as DNA synthesizers and sequencers that permit what had been time-consuming and difficult experimentation to be accomplished rapidly and with little effort. New devices have now increased the speed and sensitivity of detection and analysis of proteins and nucleic acids by orders of magnitude. Typically such equipment is placed in a central location where it is available to a large number of investigators who can benefit from its use. Precisely such an arrangement is proposed for the equipment to be purchased through this award.
