News
LABORATORY PROFILE A bridge between two worlds At the interface between analytical chemistry and the various fields of biology sits a small, but growing, organization known as the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF). Its member laboratories, often called "core facilities", share a common set of challenges in analyzing samples for other people. Shared facilities are becoming increasingly important in the biomedical research community. "Other research communities have long recognized the need for highly specialized shared facilities," says Clayton W. Naeve, Director of the Center for Biotechnology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "This dependence on sophisticated and often expensive instrumentation is a trend that's clearly occurring in the biomedical research community. Bigger and bigger research efforts with multiple participants, perhaps from diverse fields, all relying provided by our membership " Naeve and Ronald L. Niece, Director of the Biotechnology Resource Facility at the University of California, Irvine, are particularly proud of ABRF's research committees, which include several devoted to techniques such as protein sequencing, DNA analysis, carbohydrate analysis, and MS. The committees' mission is to establish realistic expectations of the analyses that can be accomplished with current technology. "All of these committees are very active in assessing the state of the art" says Niece. "By participating in one of the studies you find out very quickly how your laboratory's capabilities comwith the rest of the world " Reflecting ABRF's roots in the protein chemistry community, the first
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research committee was dedicated to protein analysis. This committee's first research project was designed to evaluate member laboratory capabilities in protein sequencing and amino acid analysis. In addition to establishing that an average facility could correctly sequence approximately 24 residues from 100 pmol of peptide, the results of that study yielded unexpected, but useful, information: the protein sequencing instruments of that time routinely had an ~ 10% failure rate. Only recently did ABRF establish a separate MS research committee. Niece says: "An important component of the peptide synthesis research committee from the very beginning was MS. That was a conscious decision. We all saw that MS was developing to the level that it was going to have a role in many of the areas of interest to ABRF members. Because we wanted MS to be a part of the other committees, it wasn't until recently that we set up a separate MS research committee." Although ABRF is firmly planted in the protein chemistry community, it is striving to include the molecular biology (meaning nucleic acid) community as well. Naeve says: "The protein chemistry community is pretty close-knit. In contrast, the molecular biology community is incredibly diverse and includes people from many different backgrounds—many of whom were not trained as analytical chemists." Niece adds, "We are reaching out to that community. We think we have a role in the analytical side of molecular biology research." The organization is unusual in the biological fields because it focuses so much on analytical techniques. In the past ABRF has met in satellite meetings at other conferences, but in the last two years, it has branched out into its own meetings. "[ABRF 97] is our second independent meeting. This meeting is techniques and methods, unabashedly so. Nobody's ashamed of being interested in the techniques required for life science research," says Niece. "From my perspective," says Naeve, "some research labs are engaged in basic research that isn't methods oriented, and others are methods-oriented and focus on how to do it better. How can I build a better mass spectrometer so that I can sequence proteins off a 2-D gel? It's those communities of analytical chemists shat participate [at ABRF meetings] because they are providing the advanced technology that is de-
Analytical Chemistry News & Features, May 1, 1997
ployed to the rest of the research community in the core facility setting." ABRF has recently launched The Journal ofBiomolecular Techniques, a completely electronic journal. John Shively, chairman of the Division of Immunology at City of Hope, conceived the idea for a journal that was completely electronic, from submission to review to final publication. Articles will be reviewed by the scientific community at large; only those people who actually try a technique in their own labonitory review a paper, and each reviewer will be identified. The organization began informally more than 10 years ago when Niece asked at the single meeting of the Symposium for American Protein Chemists how many people found themselves in the position of routinely analyzing samples for clients or collaborators. Thinking that it would be beneficial to share strategies for dealing with the unique problems of these facilities—scientific, managerial, and financial they made arrangements to hold 3. round-table discussion at the 1986 Methods and Protein Sequence Analysis meeting. "Three hundred people showed up for what we thought was going to be an intimate sharing session" says Niece The membership of the organization currently comprises the actual laboratories. Individuals may join as associate members, but the voting rights are allocated to the laboratory with one vote per lab. That vision of the organization may be changing, however. "We want to move from this core facility vision to a much more diverse set of laboratories, where, in fact, their primary emphasis may be on the instrumental development or where they may be running samples prepared by their collaborators," says Niece. Celia Henry
Niece (left) and Naeve discuss ABRF's past, present, and future.
