Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Transporters and ion channels are specialized types of proteins that are responsible for moving nutrients and ions across cellular membranes. To transport nutrients, these proteins often also transport charged ions, like salt or hydrogen, to provide a chemical driving force or to neutralize the nutrient's positive or negative charge. The movement of these charges can be measured by a specialized instrument that detects very fast, sub-second electrical signals that can tell us a lot about how transporter proteins function and that we can use discover what nutrients a specific transporter moves into or out of cells. The SURFE2R N1 from Nanion Technologies is one such specialized device and uses a sensor that contains small cell-like membranes with a transporter protein of interest. The SURFE2R N1 uses a robot to flow different solutions very quickly and records how adding different ions and nutrients might result in an electrical signal. The solute carrier (SLC) gene family is the largest group of transporters with ~450 different genes. Although it's a very large and diverse family of genes, we do not know the function or what nutrients about 150 of these proteins transport. The research of Drs. Parker, Conibear, and Tibbits is focused on understanding the importance of transporters and ion channels in a diverse range of cell types, including heart cells, mammalian fibroblasts, human macrophages, and yeast. The requested equipment will enable us to discovery new transporters and new substrates for known transporters, as well as understand how environments or mutations affect the activity of specific transporters and ion channels. This knowledge is essential to understanding how and whether certain cell types transport specific nutrients. Further, the requested equipment will train the next generation of scientists in Canada and decrease the global knowledge gap about transporter function.