MADISON Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found a new way to accelerate a workhorse instrument that identifies proteins. The high-speed technique could help diagnose cancer sooner and point to new drugs for treating a wide range of conditions.
Proteins are essential building blocks of biology, used in muscle, brain, blood and hormones. If the genes are the blueprints, the proteins patterned on them are the hammers and tongs of life.
Proteins are not only numerous humans have more than a 100,000 varieties but each one has a complex structure that determines its exact function in the biological realm. Just as tissue from cats and kangaroos can be distinguished by studying the individual "letters" of their genetic codes, protein A can be distinguished from protein B by looking at the amino-acid subunits that compose all proteins.
The fastest way to count and identify proteins is to use a mass spectrometer, a precise instrument that measures chemical compounds by mass. "Mass spec is an essential part of modern biology, and most people use it to look at variations in proteins," says Joshua Coon, a professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry.
Because mass spectrometers are expensive, and proteins are both numerous and ubiquitous, chemists have recently learned to double up their samples so they can, for example, compare normal tissue to diseased tissue in a single run.
Knowing how the proteins change when good tissue goes bad suggests what has gone wrong.
Now, Coon has doubled-down on the doubling-up process with a technique that has the potential to run as many as 20 samples at once. The new process, described in the journal Nature Methods, has already gone to work, says Alexander Hebert, a graduate student who was first author on the new publication.
"Working with John Denu at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, we are looking at mice that lived with or wit
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| Contact: Joshua Coon jcoon@chem.wisc.edu 608-263-1718 University of Wisconsin-Madison Source:Eurekalert |
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