The goals of this collaborative project are twofold:
(1) to identify, clone and characterize novel enzymes of
aromatic amino acid biosynthesis in the extremely
thermophilic archaeon, A. fulgidus, and (2) to develop the
scientific basis for fluorescence intensity standards used
in quantifying fluorescently labeled complementary DNA
hybridized to DNA fixed in surface microarrays. The PIs
bring together expertise in the use of DNA array
technology for gene discovery in eukaryotes with knowledge
of the whole genome of the archaeon Archaeoglobus fulgidus.
The UCLA laboratories have unique facilities for growing
this organism under a range of conditions which promote
the expression of a variety of gene products, the DNA
microarray detection equipment for detecting the
transcripts associated with these gene products, and the
LC/MS instrumentation for high-throughput screening of
enzyme activities.
