Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The Hill lab specializes in untargeted (i.e., discovery) metabolomics for VOCs produced by plants, microorganisms, and mammals. We typically use thermal desorption tubes (TDTs) for the collection and concentration of VOCs and analyze them comprehensively on state-of-the-art analytical instruments. However, very often, we can only collect one sample per sampling point. Therefore, due to the untargeted nature of our work, when we only have one sample per time point or sampling point, we cannot run our chromatography in a fully optimized manner. If we had the ability to take that one sample and create technical replicates from it, we would be able to optimize the analysis. In addition, having replicates would allow us us to spike in validation standards on replicate samples to confirm compounds or to quantify them as well as afford us the ability to preserve replicate samples in a bank for future analysis. We can solve our "one precious sample" problem via purchase of a Recollect 10TM instrument. This system generates up to 10 technical replicates of the sample, distributing one sample equally across all tubes or in a dilution series. The requested instrument is the only stand-alone instrument available commercially that can generate replicates or dilution series without the need to commandeer an analytical instrument. We also require a robot system to run the recollected TDTs on the analytical system as the TDTs used in the Recollect 10T are of a geometry and material (steel) that will not work on our current robot. We have selected the TD 100-xrTM robot, which is an automated thermal desorption system capable of rapid processing of up to 100 TDTs in a single sequence and is compatible with the TDTs. The use of these two systems will substantially improve the quality of our scientific work. We have confirmed from the instrument manufacturers that no Recollect 10TM instrument is present on the UBC campus nor elsewhere in British Columbia. The same is true of other instruments capable of recollecting TDT content. We anticipate that 18 HQP, including postdoctoral research fellows, graduate students and technical staff, will be trained using the requested equipment over the next 5 years. Our diverse team of HQP will acquire technical and hands-on-training while working with the requested instrument that will enhance their competitiveness for the biomedical and analytical positions.