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Carver Trust grant to advance molecular studies at Illinois
Jim Barlow,
Life Sciences Editor
217-333-5802; jebarlow@illinois.edu
3/9/05
CHAMPAIGN, Ill.
— Rapidly advancing tools let researchers amass oceans of biological
data – so much so that fishing out the meaning is as daunting
as climbing a mountain without gear. A new $3.15 million, three-year
grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, however, will make the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign a national leader in its
capability to analyze molecular information about cells, officials say.
The grant to the Biotechnology
Center allows for the purchase of a powerful superconducting magnet,
the hiring of a team of bioinformatics experts, and implementing and
customizing advanced integrated software systems.
A 15-Tesla magnet – the heart of an ultra-high-performance Fourier-Transform
Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometer expected to cost more than
a million dollars – will be only the second one established in
the nation.
It will provide researchers at Illinois with “an unprecedented
ability to analyze subtle molecular changes in cell and human biology
– mostly at the level of proteins and small molecules,”
said Neil L. Kelleher, a professor in the bioengineering and chemistry departments
and co-principal investigator on the grant.
Kelleher already uses an 8.5 Tesla instrument in his lab and has experience
in software development for using the magnet to analyze small, intact
proteins. The 15-Tesla model will let researchers precisely probe chemical
modifications to larger and more complex proteins from diverse individuals
in a population.
Mining the data for meaning and significance has become a challenge
during the last decade as scientific tools have been created to complete
the human genome and genomes for many plants and animals. Scientists
currently are using the genomic information to probe DNA, proteins and
metabolites for their functions and interrelationships.
“This grant from the Carver Trust will greatly enhance the capabilities
of University of Illinois research and our visibility, and it will enable
a new range of cutting-edge research,” said co-principal investigator
Jonathan V. Sweedler, the Lycan Professor of Chemistry and director
of the Biotechnology Center.
“Put simply, modern analytical instrumentation allows the accumulation
of gigabytes of data from characterizing a biological sample, but sifting
through the data and extracting the needed information is now the task
of experts,” he said. “Researchers in most cases are left
data rich but knowledge poor.”
The Biotechnology Center is now evaluating a range of software and computer
systems needed to move forward with this initiative. The specialists
will work with these new systems to meet the data-interpretation needs
of the diverse research on campus.
The magnet, software system and new specialists will be administered
by the Biotechnology Center and housed in the Institute
for Genomic Biology, now under construction on Gregory Drive between
Bevier Hall and the Morrow Plots in Urbana.
“The Carver Trust is truly an important contributor to this university’s
success in many areas,” Sweedler said. “The combined resources
will significantly increase the competitive fitness of literally hundreds
of research groups at Illinois. These new resources also will ensure
that the breakthroughs in cell biology and molecular-based medicine
come from talented investigators in Champaign-Urbana.”
The Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust is located in Muscatine, Iowa. Its
program in medical and scientific research provides support for innovative
investigation that holds the promise for advancing scientific knowledge
and improving human health. Roy J. Carver graduated from Illinois in
1934 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Since 1992, the
Carver Trust has awarded some $12 million to support scientific initiatives
at Illinois.
