Award details

A new EPR facility for the Centre for Chemical Biology

Reference	BB/E012418/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Emma Raven
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Paul Cullis, Professor Gordon Roberts, Professor Jonathan Roger Woodward
Institution	University of Leicester
Department	Chemistry
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	220,284
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	13/11/2007
End date	12/11/2008
Duration	12 months

Abstract

The aim of this proposal is to establish a new continuous wave EPR facility for the Centre for Chemical Biology at Leicester to support a number of well-funded mechanistic and structural studies on a range of biological systems. This is a multidisciplinary, multi-user bid that includes staff across two faculties, several departments and two institutions. This facility will play an essential part in the long-term development of the Centre by making it possible for us to take advantage of the speed and sensitivity of modern EPR equipment. The technical expertise that we need to suport this new facility is already on-site.

Summary

There are a number of experimental methods that people use to obtain answers to specific biological questions. In most cases, however, one single technique cannot provide a complete answer. Because of this, it is common practice to use more than one experimental technique and then to combine all the information together to build up a detailed picture of what is happening. One very useful techinque that is under-utilised in the UK is electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). This method is capable of detecting free (unpaired) electrons. This is useful because the unpaired electrons act as 'spies' on the molecule and can provide information on local environment. This means that EPR can be used to report on biological (free) radicals, on (paramagnetic) metal centres in biological systems and on protein dynamics. At Leicester, we do not have access to an EPR facility that is suitable for biological work. This slows our work down because it means that we cannot obtain some of the information that we need as fast as we would like to. The current proposal seeks funding to address this problem.

Committee	Closed Committee - Biomolecular Sciences (BMS)
Research Topics	Structural Biology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Research Equipment Initiative 2006 (RE6) [2006]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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