Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

A complex network of diverse interplaying pathways allows living cells to use nutrients from their surroundings to adapt to environmental changes. This outstanding capacity for adaptation requires the orchestration of signal perception, signal transduction, gene expression regulation and ultimately the adjustment of cellular metabolism. Therefore, quantitative analysis is of critical importance to understand and dissect basic mechanisms in normal physiological states and diseases. Accordingly, our research critically requires the requested imaging system for quantitative analyzes of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and proteins. For the analysis of key regulatory steps, we use radiographic and chemiluminescent approaches to precisely measure the amount and timing of changes, as well as the modification of DNA, RNA, and proteins. In particular, the requested equipment will be used to study various molecular processes including bacterial infection mechanisms, transcription regulation, chromatin remodeling, plant-pathogen interactions and cardiovascular diseases. The acquisition of the requested imaging system is essential to our research, and is therefore expected to provide fundamental advancement in the understanding of several regulatory steps of cell signaling and gene expression.