Andrea L. Tracy, Ph.D. - US grants

Non Technical Abstract:
The LI-COR Odyssey Infrared Imaging System acquired through this award will enable highly quantitative investigations in diverse areas of research such as mitotic spindle function, muscle function, obesity, receptor function, and plant responses to heat stress. This instrument uses infrared (IR) technology for the highly sensitive and accurate measurement of biological molecules over several orders of magnitude, thus facilitating the detection of very low but biologically meaningful signals in a diverse group of applications, including protein and nucleic acid gels, protein arrays, In-Cell Westerns and tissue sections. Further, this instrumentation will be incorporated into undergraduate science education and research training programs in biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, and psychology.

Technical Abstract:
This highly sensitive imaging system will be used in a broad range of ongoing research projects, making previously qualitative assays quantitative. In particular, the Odyssey imaging system will be used to: a) examine the role of the protein myosin-10 in mitotic spindle function by facilitating dominant-negative analysis; b) investigate the involvement of high-fat-diet-induced changes in levels of the adipose hormone leptin in the hippocampus; c) analyze the contribution of the 3' untranslated region of the Rubisco activase gene to the stability of the Rubisco activase protein and thus to the heat stress response in plants; d) explore the role of perisynaptic glial cells at the neuromuscular junction by determining whether they express COX-2 in response to stimulation of their muscarinic acetylcholine receptors; and e) monitor the isolation and purification of neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunits for use in studies to analyze drug-receptor interactions.