This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) continued its support for a multi-user research facility specializing in the separation and characterization of biomolecules, the Biomolecule Separation and Characterization Core Facility (BCSFC). This Core maintains instruments, such as mass spectrometers, nanoHPLCs, BIACORE (surface plasmon resonance), KODAK FX in vivo imaging system, centrifuges, ultracentrifuges, gamma and beta scintillation counters, HPLC system equipped with various detectors, capillary electrophoresis, UV/Vis spectrophotometers, microplate fluorometer and luminometer, RT-PCR, thermalcyclers, and several other shared instruments. Numerous other resources are available for documentation and analysis of experimental data collected using these instruments. The purpose of this Core is to provide the broadest possible group of users with access to well-maintained, state-of-the-art, equipment for biomolecule analysis. The facility is housed at room 5.208 of the new Biosciences building since January 2007. The facility was entered in average 1,000 times per month, by 249 individual users, representing 44 research groups from UTEP departments (7) and from the School of Public Health Houston at El Paso (1). The BCSCF is staffed by a full-time coordinator (Lani Alcazar, BS), who has been responsible for routine maintenance, scheduling preventive maintenance by factory technicians and engineers, user orientation and assistance, as well as account and inventory maintenance. Partial salary was provided to the core director (Igor Almeida, PhD) for ongoing oversight of these activities.