John Nolan, a former NFCR postdoctoral fellow who is now a staff member in Life Sciences Division, is the principal investigator for this project. He envisions several types of assays such as the action of endonucleases that cleave specific DNA structures. With appropriate fluorescent labeling, these reactions can be followed in time to yield kinetic information. Kinetic cytometry of the molecular complexes bound to microspheres and of cellular systems are the subject of the second project, rapid kinetic cytometry. Larry Sklar, Co-Director of the NFCR and a full time faculty member in the University of New Mexico's Department of Pathology, has adapted stopped flow techniques used in analytical chemistry to provide the basis for the development of an instrument that is capable of complex mix and remix experiments that deliver cells and reagents to the analysis point in 300 milliseconds.
Kinetic information is derived by following the reactions as a function of time.
The third project in the renewal, lead by Jim Jett and Babs Marrone, is an outgrowth of a long standing collaboration with the ultrasensitive fluorescence detection group of Richard Keller of the Chemical Science and Technology Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A priority score of 109 was received along with the recommendation of five additional years of funding thus ensuring that the NFCR will be funded through the year 2002.