21 January 2020
Researchers in South Australia are set to benefit from an almost $1million investment in mass spectrometry through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities Grants for 2020.
As the administrating organisation, UniSA led the bid with Prof Peter Hoffmann as lead CI for the new equipment, but researchers from across the State will benefit from the extra capacity to research a range of significant projects from unlocking biological processes that can lead to cancer, through to improving the quality and safety of food and wines and countering national security threats by advanced testing for explosives.
Bid leader Professor Peter Hoffmann says the new infrastructure will be significant for researchers across the state.
“Mass spectrometry can accurately measure the mass of different molecules and can also quantify those molecules within a sample,” Prof Hoffmann says.
“Even large biomolecules like proteins are identifiable and qualifiable by mass, which means that biologists can perform some important experiments using mass spectroscopy, adding new dimensions to their understanding of biological and chemical processes.
“This grant will help upgrade the capacity of the Protein Quantification Centre of South Australia expanding the Centre to include three nodes, one at UniSA, one at Flinders University and one at the University of Adelaide, enabling researchers from all three SA public universities, the Australian Wine Research Institute and SAHMRI to access the technology.
“Its an important investment in South Australia and will be used by physicists, chemists, biologists, clinicians and engineers to enhance research across a wide range of areas from cancer and antibiotic research, through to food safety and forensics.”
Media contact: Michèle Nardelli phone: +61 418 823 673 or +61 8 8302 0966 email: Michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au
