NSF Award
9551282
This project supports the purchase of an HPLC with a diode-array detector (DAD). Further, the instrument must have the capability of doing the following experiments: quantitative deconvolution of overlapping chromatographic peaks, second derivative spectroscopy, spectral library searches, diode and multichannel averaging, peptide mapping, microbore separations and post-column reaction detection. This instrument is an integral part of new experiments being incorporated into analytical, instrumental, organic, biochemistry, molecular biology, advanced synthesis, and undergraduate research. New bioanalytical and environmental labs in analytical chemistry introduce students to modern HPLC separation techniques and spectroscopic methods and encourage them to understand the fundamentals of chemical interactions (mobile-stationary phase) and multichannel devices (DAD). Fundamental principles are reinforced in upper-division laboratory courses. For example, students in biochemistry perform a tryptic digestion of a reduced protein, separation of the peptide fragments by RP-HPLC, and identification of coenzyme carrying peptide fragments by their UV spectra. The HPLC-DAD is also being used for undergraduate research projects involving kinetics and mechanisms of micellar-enhanced photochemical reactions and photoinitiated peroxyoxalate chemiluminescence. This instrumentation is having a broad impact on chemistry and biology students and is becoming an integral part of a new macromolecular characterization/isolation laboratory.
