Our laboratories are housed in the Multidisciplinary Research Building on the University of Kansas West Campus in Lawrence. A fully equipped state of the art Biological Safety Level 3 laboratory fully equipped for macromolecular formulation studies and adjacent tissue culture facility are an integral part of the laboratory. The laboratory is equipped to perform extensive spectroscopic and thermodynamic studies including circular dichroism (CD), fluorescence, UV-Visible absorbance, and dynamic light scattering measurements over a wide temperature range (0-90° C). Our instrumentation is also designed for high throughput studies permitting the rapid accumulation of data. Thermodynamic measurements are performed in high throughput high-sensitivity scanning calorimeters as well as a high sensitivity pressure perturbation calorimeter and an ultrasonic spectrometer that greatly expands our capabilities in characterizing molecular stability. The state of art tissue culture facility permits a range of biological studies to be performed including plaque assays.
The Mass Spectroscopy Laboratory is equipped with a Micromass Q-TOF micro and MALDI-TOF dual detector mass spectrometers. The Q-TOF instrument is interfaced to a Waters LC system capable of two dimensional separations with direct output to the Q-TOF instrument. Data from both instruments is analysed by protein-Lynx software that is capable of searching numerous protein databases including SWISS-PROT and NCBI. The laboratory also houses a Beckman-Coulter 2D Proteome System for high resolution 2D chromatography, and a Beckman-Coulter Analytical Ultracentrifuge with interference and absorbance optics. The Proteome system utilizes chromatofocusing in the first dimension coupled to RP-HPLC in the second. All fractions can be further characterized by mass spectroscopy (MALDI-TOF or Q-TOF MS/ MS). The proteome system is capable of separating over 2000 proteins per run for mass spectroscopic identification. The lab borders the Universities Protein Structure Building which gives us direct access to other mass spectrometers including FTMS as well s high field NMRs (600 and 800 MHz). We also have access to modulated DSC and powder x-ray diffraction.
