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Mayo Clinic Install World's Strongest Magnet
Rochester - Mar 03, 2003 The most powerful magnet ever made for research into cellular proteins and DNA -- a one-of-a-kind, ultra high-field 12 Tesla-strength magnet � is expected to arrive Feb. 27 from England for installation at the Mayo Clinic. "Tesla" is a unit of magnetic flux density that describes the strength of a magnet. Mayo Clinic's 12 Tesla magnet is 240,000 times more powerful than the Earth's magnetic field, and is the highest Tesla magnet currently in use for medical research. The magnet will become part of Mayo's new protein analysis mass spectrometer housed in the W.M. Keck FT-ICR Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, a division of the recently opened Mayo Proteomics Research Center. This new instrument joins nine smaller mass spectrometers at Mayo. It will be used for the advanced study of proteins in a technology called Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry -- "FT-ICR mass spec" for short. There is only one higher-field FT-ICR mass spectrometer in the world, a 15-Tesla instrument located at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla. Unlike the Mayo Clinic machine, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's instrument is not intended for exclusive use in medical research into improved patient care. This focus on health-care application makes the Mayo mass spec the most powerful of its kind in the world. The new 12-Tesla FT-ICR mass spectrometer is the product of a creative collaboration between Bruker Daltonics Inc., based in Billerica, Mass., and the Mayo Clinic. A custom-designed machine, it will be used for identifying proteins so scientists can understand their structures, functions, roles and changing nature as part of the newest frontier of medical science known as proteomics. The powerful magnetic field causes peptide and protein ions to undergo a cyclic motion whose frequency is dependent upon its mass. This mass can then be used to derive a protein's characteristics. Says David Muddiman, M.D., director of the W.M. Keck Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at Mayo, "This high-end instrumentation allows us to approach mammalian proteomes with confidence." Adds Paul Speir, M.D., assistant vice president at Bruker Daltonics, "The path that Dr. Muddiman is taking with this research approach validates the benefits of ultra-high field FTMS for proteomics research and our long standing commitment to the development of ultra-high field bioanalytical fourier transform mass spectrometry."
Why is Proteomics Important? Understanding proteins will help scientists to understand the biological basis of disease as never before -- and as a result, help them to design new diagnostic tests and treatments that work at the level of proteins. This is the promise of proteomics. The challenge of proteomics is that proteins in cells and fluids are hard to look at -- they're small three-dimensional molecules that are always changing in function and expression. Many occur in low concentration. Unlike genes, only minute amounts are available for detailed analysis. "You have to catch them when you can," says Dr. Muddiman. To do that, researchers need an exquisitely precise, extremely sensitive, analytical instrument that affords comprehensive measurements capable of advancing both the scientific understanding and the clinical application of proteomics. A similar mass spectrometer made by Bruker Daltonics -- and equipped with a 9.4 Tesla superconducting magnet -- is used by the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It characterized the complete suite of proteins (called a "proteome") in a bacterium in just three hours. Mayo Clinic's 12-Tesla magnet-powered mass spectrometer is expected to provide detailed and accurate information with similarly impressive results. For example, it is expected to determine the identity of a human proteome -- an estimated 25,000 proteins expressed in a human cell at any given time -- in a single day! With this new technology, Mayo joins an estimated dozen research laboratories in the world capable of such detailed analysis of proteins. Mayo's 12-Tesla is a cosmopolitan magnet. Crafted in Yarnton, England outside of Oxford by Magnex Scientific; it left the port of Thames on Feb. 3 for Montreal, Canada. From there it was loaded onto an 18-wheel air ride van to travel overland to Chicago. After clearing U.S. Customs in Chicago Feb. 20, it traveled overland north and west to Minnesota. Says Dr. Muddiman, "This unique and novel instrumentation will further strengthen Mayo Clinic's research activities in proteomics. It also will clearly allow us to advance molecular medicine, both at the basic-science and the patient-care levels." Related Links Mayo Clinic SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
Microscale Channels Steer Neurons To Rewire Damaged Nerves
Ames - Feb 13, 2003Using microscale channels cut in an ultrathin biodegradable polymer, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory is working to regrow nerve cells. The technique, which may one day allow the paralyzed to walk and the blind to see, has been proven to work for peripheral nerve regeneration in laboratory rats. |
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