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

Research at the interface between chemistry and biology ("chemical biology") utilizes the power of chemistry to help understand the complexity inherent in biological systems. Chemical biology is an exciting area of study that is now a dominant theme in research in the chemical sciences. Competitive research in this area requires routine access to the equipment required for the culture and isolation of a variety of cell lines and the incubation of cells for induction and synthesis of recombinant metalloproteins. This proposal concerns purchase of this equipment, which is of crucial importance to a large number of researchers in the UWO Chemistry Department. With this new equipment, the applicants will carry out a large number of research studies. Using recombinant metalloproteins Stillman will probe the details of metal-dependent protein folding and metal-dependent metabolic function, particularly in neurophysiology and Konermann will study the effects of misfolding of proteins as the cause of amyloid protein aggregates, which are considered to play a vital role in Alzheimer's disease, and in brain physiology. An extremely active area of interfacial research concerns the chemical properties of whole living cells and cell membranes. Gillies will develop novel antibiotics, which act by disrupting the membranes of bacterial cells. The molecular level study of live cells is a major objective in the research of Norton, Lagugné-Labarthet and Ding in which chemical and technical developments in microscopy will be used for novel research on the properties of living cells. These developments will lead to new imaging modalities capable of nanometer spatial resolution, high temporal resolutions, and single molecule detection. Ding and Kraatz will study the effects of chemicals on the metabolic activities of living cells. In summary, the requested equipment will provide a hitherto unavailable facility for a large number of researchers allowing the synthesis of recombinant proteins and growth of cell models that will lead to exciting progress to be made in our understanding of the relationships between biological molecules and structures, and their functions.