Rowett Research
Services

 Analytical Facilities - Proteomics Section

  Head of Section: Dr Garry Rucklidge

Proteomics

In the past four years the Institute has made a substantial investment in Proteomics technology with the purchase of state of the art instrumentation necessary for protein isolation and identification. The Proteomics Unit offers a service to research groups throughout the Institute (and externally) who have a low or high throughput requirement for electrophoretic separation of proteins and their subsequent identification by peptide mass fingerprinting by MALDItof and nano-flow HPLC combined with ESI mass spectrometry.

Following the separation of sample proteins on 2D gel electrophoresis the gel images are analysed for differences in protein expression brought about by nutritional status, experimental manipulations or disease states. Image analysis software is networked throughout the Institute allowing multiple access to the software. Protein spots of interest are excised from relevant gels using a robotic spot cutter and tryptic peptides generated from these samples using a multi-tasking liquid handling robot. The tryptic peptides generated are subjected to MALDItof (see mass spectrometry section) for peptide mass fingerprinting and identification of proteins by submission of peptide masses for comparison to various protein databases.

Instruments available: