{"id":9367,"date":"2016-07-24T08:08:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T08:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=9367"},"modified":"2016-07-24T08:08:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T08:08:02","slug":"9367","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/9367\/","title":{"rendered":"New UW-Madison center offers ultra-speed protein analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"UW-Madison<\/a>
UW-Madison undergraduate Kyle Connors operates a mass spectrometer in the new NIH National Center for Quantitative Biology at UW\u2013Madison. PHOTO: NICK WILKES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three University of Wisconsin\u2014Madison researchers have won a prestigious, five-year grant to establish the National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems, which will develop next-generation protein measurement technologies and offer them to biologists nationwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scientific technique of mass spectrometry, or mass spec, can already recognize proteins, but the researchers are eying a speed-up akin to that which revolutionized genetics research over the past 20 years.It is proteins that do the work in the body: Hemoglobin, for example, holds oxygen for transport in the blood stream, while insulin helps regulate sugar in the blood. Knowing which protein forms are present in what quantities, their subcellular location and their function is critical to understanding health and disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

Genes are vital carriers of information and templates for proteins, says co-investigator\u00a0David Pagliarini<\/span><\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison professor of biochemistry. But genes alone don\u2019t explain everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]Knowing which protein forms are present in what quantities, their subcellular location and their function is critical to understanding health and disease.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

The center will serve as a training ground in mass spec and a laboratory to invent new techniques and equipment. One tactic to be explored relies on parallel processing, an approach like the one that fed a revolution in gene sequencing.Two among the many areas of interest concern lung cancer and diabetes, Coon says. \u201cWe have researchers who want to examine proteins related to the function \u2014 or failure \u2014 of the pancreatic cells that make insulin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The center, funded at $6 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will develop and make available advanced protein measurement technologies, says\u00a0Josh Coon<\/span><\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison professor of biomolecular chemistry and an expert in mass spec. \u201cThese are complicated, high-end instruments that hundreds or thousands of biomedical researchers who are funded by the NIH need access to. There are many problems that are not solved with current technology, and that high-throughput mass spec can address.\u201d\u201cThere is lot of action between the gene, the protein it patterns, and the actual biological result,\u201d he explains. \u201cMass spec technology allows you to measure the proteins, which are closer to action, and we plan to push the limits on pace, depth, throughput.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"A<\/a>
A modified orbitrap mass spectrometer in the Coon Laboratory. The modifications illuminate trapped protein ions with infrared photons, providing the basis of a new protein sequencing technology. PHOTO: NICK WILKES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Co-investigator\u00a0Lingjun Li<\/span><\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison professor\u00a0 of pharmacy, will develop chemical markers to identify individual samples after they are mixed for mass spec analysis. In a similar vein, Coon will explore \u201cmetabolic tags\u201d composed of amino acids that enter proteins after being eaten by lab animals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pagliarini says he will serve as \u201ca bridge between technology development and biological applications. Our future collaborators have told us there are certain problem out there waiting for a solution in new technology.\u201d\u201cWe are not developing technology in a vacuum,\u201d says Li, \u201cbut with specific biomedical needs in mind. Our methods will be broadly available to NIH researchers, and they will be the test bed that validates our methods.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe NIH wants the center to invent and disseminate technologies,\u201d says Coon. \u201cWe hope to do for proteins what high-throughput sequencing has done for genomic studies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems is funded by NIH grant\u00a0<\/em>P41 GM108538.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three University of Wisconsin\u2014Madison researchers have won a prestigious, five-year grant to establish the National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems, which will develop next-generation protein measurement technologies and offer them to biologists nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-culture"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",500,334,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mass-spec-lab-1-500x334.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Biology<\/a> Culture<\/a>","tag_info":"Culture","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}