Research Announcements

Now Accepting Letters of Intent for Fall 2014 PCORI Funding Cycle

Letters of intent are due to PCORI by 5 PM  ET Friday, September 5, 2014 for the Fall Funding Cycle.

To read more about the open opportunities visit the PCORI Funding Center.

Open Opportunities:

Improving Healthcare Systems ($ 1.5-5 M)

Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options ($ 2 M)

Communication and Dissemination Research ($ 1.5 M)

Addressing Disparities ($1.5 M)

Improving Methods for Conducting Patient-Centered Outcomes Research ($1 M)

New Western Blot Services available through Protein Structure Core Facility

The PSCF (Protein Structure Core Facility) is offering free hands-on individual training for our Peggy Simple Western Size or Charge system.  Training consists of three mornings, during which the trainee will run three plates of their own samples.  Our goal is that people leave training with an optimized lysate-antibody pair, and good confidence in operating the equipment and the associated software.

Our introductory pricing after training will be $10 per hour.  The PSCF currently provides all reagents other than lysate and primary antibody for standard size and charge runs.

Not familiar with what the Peggy can do?  It is manufactured by ProteinSimple, and performs automated Westerns or isoelectric focusing using capillaries.  Antibodies are used for detection by chemiluminescence.  Results can be viewed as electropherograms or lanes, and quantitation is imbedded in the software.  The goal is to save researchers time spent performing the manual steps of Western blot analysis, and to provide a method for determining post-translational modification of proteins (e.g. detecting phosphorylated and dephosphorylated signaling proteins). For more information, you can ask us or see the company’s website: http://www.proteinsimple.com/simple_western_overview.html

The PSCF still provides protein and peptide sequencing by Edman degradation, and protein quantitation by amino acid analysis.  These two methods are the gold standards for information about primary structure and amount of proteins.  For more information about the services offered in the PSCF, see http://www.unmc.edu/pscf,  e-mail us at pscf@unmc.edu, or call the director (Laurey Steinke, PhD) at 402-559-5176.  To schedule training, or arrange delivery of a sample, please call the PSCF (402-559-6647) and arrange a time with Michele Fontaine, Researcher.