News

New Equipment

New Instrumentation for a New Building

By Dr. David Roll

With the completion of the new Crothers Science and Nursing Center came the purchase of some new instrumentation that will dramatically increase the quality of laboratory instrumentation for research and teaching of new techniques for our science students. This instrumentation begins with an upgrade of our current gas chromatograph mass spectrometer instrumentation (GC-MS) to a Trace 1300 gas chromatograph linked to an ISQ quadrupole mass spectrometer.  This instrument allows students to analyze a host of organic compounds that are easily vaporized and fragmented to detect a series of molecular fragments that allows one to identify the structure of any unknown organic compound.   The GC-MS instrument has allowed us to collect preliminary data on the unique compounds produced by the blooms of lilac bushes found in Highland Park.   This is an ongoing research project.

Secondly we have acquired a Nano liter HPLC system coupled to a linear ion-trap LSQ that will allow us to analyze the structure of any unknown protein. We currently carry out the protein purification of alpha-1-antitrypsin which students analyze with SDS gel electrophoresis.  One way to confirm the identity of this protein is to isolate it from the SDS gel and process it with trypsin and inject it into the LC-MS instrument.  The partial sequence of the protein will be obtained from the mass fragments identified in the mass spectrometer.  Students will be able to pursue a variety of proteomics experiments in the future with this state-of-the-art instrumentation.

Thirdly we have purchased a Bruker super-cooled 300 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer that is scheduled to be installed November 9. The magnet for the instrument is cooled by a combination of both liquid nitrogen and liquid helium.  This instrument will enable students to determine the structure of a variety of organic compounds that may be synthesized in the laboratory experiments carried out in our chemistry curriculum as well as future independent research projects.  The NMR instrument was the precursor to the MRI instrumentation that is used today in hospitals for the accurate diagnosis of a variety of diseases where the disease process can be imaged in the body of the patient.