NSF Award
9217589
Six faculty members of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology request funds to purchase a phosphorimager. Use of this instrument would obviate the need for prolonged autoradiographic exposure and quantitation by scanning densitometry or gel slicing and scintillation spectrometry currently necessary for several of the projects discussed herein. One project (Richter) deals with translational control during early development. Cis sequences and trans binding proteins that control translation have been identified and their isolation and cloning would be facilitated by the phosphorimager. Another project (Baril) examines the factors involved with DNA replication in human cells. Detailed analysis of the enzymatic activities of the many factors involved in replication requires the sensitivity of a phosphorimager. The goal of a third project (Vallee) is to understand how the mechanochemical protein dynamin produces the force required for organelle movement. Recent evidence suggests that phosphorylation plays an important role in this process and the phosphorimager would be critical for examining this posttranslational modification. A fourth project (Witman) deals with the generation and control of flagellar motility in sperm and Chlamydomonas. Phosphorylation of dynein and other proteins appears to be necessary for cell motility, whose study would be enhanced with a phosphorimager. RNA processing is studied in the fifth project (Pederson). The activity of some proteins in the splicing apparatus is regulated by phosphorylation, which would be analyzed more reliably and with greater speed with a phosphorimager. The sixth project deals with how protein kinase activity in Alvsia neurons affects channel function. Analysis of this function would be facilitated with a phosphorimager.
