Expanding scientific support

High-quality scientific research requires both sophisticated equipment and highly skilled individuals to operate that equipment. Over the past several years, the university has invested in a number of core resource centers that house much of our most expensive machinery as well as the highly trained, specialized personnel who know how to best work with that equipment and can be consulted on its use.
This arrangement makes sense for a number of reasons. It allows us to obtain equipment that would be unaffordable for a single lab to purchase and maintain. It allows us to realize efficiencies that come from combining work from multiple labs and processing it in larger batches. And because the university subsidizes much of the costs involved in maintaining and upgrading the equipment, individual labs have more funds available to spend on other things.
The people who staff the resource centers, and who become extremely fluent in their specialty, serve as an important resource themselves — working with faculty and other researchers to help get the most out of the services they offer. Resource centers provide a place where young scientists can learn about cutting-edge tools, where newly hired faculty can get up and running quickly and where scientists from very different specialties can cross paths and interact with each other.
Providing core resource centers is critically important to our research enterprise. But to ensure that our investments in core resource centers meet the needs of the university’s labs, I’ve asked John Tooze, vice president for scientific and facility operations, and Amy Wilkerson, associate vice president of research support, to survey the labs and determine where there is demand for new services or upgrades. A few weeks ago, John sent a memo to heads of lab, research professors and resource center directors to ask what types of additional services and equipment they most need.
The responses suggest that there are needs in several areas:
High throughput DNA sequencing. Several faculty members have indicated that they need access to the much faster, next-generation high throughput DNA sequencing now possible. Currently, conventional DNA sequencing is outsourced to a company that does not offer high throughput sequencing. The machinery needed to do high throughput sequencing costs around half a million dollars, and we would need people to run it and a budget for maintenance and supplies. The challenges here, which John and Amy are working on, are to determine whether demand for the service would justify these expenses and to figure out which of multiple technologies is best suited to our needs. It might initially make sense to set up a new outsourcing arrangement until it is clear which technology is the most effective.
Bio-imaging. The light microscopes in our bio-imaging facility have received a great deal of investment in recent years, but there are gaps in our bio-imaging facility. For example, we do not have an instrument located within the Laboratory Animal Research Center for long-term survival imaging of whole animals, and we have only one modern transmission electron microscope capable of digital imaging. We’ll be looking at whether or not it makes sense to add to or upgrade our equipment to fill these gaps.
Proteomics. Our proteomics resource center, which analyzes proteins and synthesizes peptides, could benefit from two additional pieces of equipment, one which can identify proteins with greater speed and accuracy, and another that can identify amino acids with posttranslational modifications. These are areas in which technologies are evolving very rapidly and we need to decide on the best combination of equipment for our particular needs.
High throughput screening. Another area where advances produce technological obsolescence very quickly is high throughput screening, a process which identifies small molecule modulators of biological functions. New or upgraded equipment would allow us to process samples faster, using smaller volumes. It’s also possible that the proteomics facility could be expanded to contain a protein production facility that would provide a means of expressing high levels of cloned proteins in bacteria and insects.
Electronic fabrication and microfabrication. Several faculty members have expressed interest in being able to build small custom electronic devices and microfabricated fluidic apparatuses for running experiments. Although we have a machine shop that makes larger custom equipment, no facility exists for creating circuit boards and other microscale components. John met with some of the faculty who are interested in this resource and we are now drawing up lists of machinery and equipment and costing the proposal.
Flow cytometry. Our cell sorting facility, which is widely used, is in need of new equipment with additional lasers, capable of detecting additional colors.
We can get some of these items, but we can’t get all of them. If we were to purchase every piece of equipment requested, it would cost over $6 million on instrumentation, not counting maintenance, supplies or salaries for the people who operate it. We might also have equipment that spends at least part of its time idle. So while the university administration is eager to invest in core resource centers, we have to look at what money is available and what the likely utilization will be and then set priorities.
To help establish those priorities, I’ve asked for a subcommittee of Academic Council comprising Mary Jeanne Kreek, Tom Muir, Michael Rout, Sasha Tarakhovsky and Michael Young to work with Amy and John. In addition to the costs, they are looking at the level of demand, the feasibility of establishing new services (things like where they would be housed and what kind of staff would be required) and whether there are good alternatives. In some cases, it might make more sense for the university to subsidize the cost of outsourcing services to private companies or to negotiate shared arrangements with nearby institutions that have the appropriate facilities.
In the coming months, as this committee proceeds with its global review, I’m confident that we will be in position to announce expanded services that will lead to exciting new opportunities and experiments in our labs.