By Heather Hobbs
BRINGING YOU THE LATEST NEWS & EVENTS FROM THE SCIENCE INDUSTRY MS Approach increases Generation of Complex Data
A new mass spectrometric acquisition technology, Scanning SWATH, which measures the human proteome substantially faster and at a lower cost than its predecessors, has been developed by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute. The scientists, who have used the new approach to uncover key proteins in the body’s response to COVID-19, hope it will lead to more effective drug screening and biomarker discovery.
Measuring the activity of different proteins in our bodies requires analysis of cells, tissues or blood samples usually obtained with mass spectrometry; however, this process is usually time-intensive and expensive.
Scanning SWATH technology modifies electric fields inside mass spectrometer machines to generate more complex and more informative data. It relies on new computer algorithms that the team also developed, to translate this data and allow for thousands of samples to be processed in parallel.
Credit: Arne Sattler, I. Charite
Christoph Messner, lead author and postdoc at the Crick and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin explained: “With this new measurement technique, we have been able to measure the proteome in blood samples from COVID-19 patients at unprecedented speed. This led to the identification of several proteins that change in our bodies as a response to the virus. We further found that certain proteins can
predict the severity of the disease and that such measurement could become a viable diagnostic tool in the future.”
Markus Ralser, senior author and group leader of the Molecular Biology of Metabolism Laboratory at the Crick and head of the Institute of Biochemistry at Charité, a leading university hospital in Berlin added: “This new generation of technology opens the door for applications, like exploratory drug screens, where it was difficult to use proteomics before. A human proteome now costs less than a complete blood count and provides much more biological information.”
Key to the success of the project was a partnership between academic labs at the Francis Crick Institute, the University of Cambridge, Charité and the mass spectrometry manufacturer SCIEX. This work was in part supported by the BBSRC as an
academia-industry partnership ‘LINK’ consortium. Published in Nature Biotechnology More information online:
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55137pr@reply-direct.com Pooled Resources to Drive Finnish Quantum Science
secondly, to provide the best possible education, both in graduate and industrial programmes; and thirdly, in driving innovation.”
“We want the institute to guide the development of current infrastructure and have a role in generating new pathways and projects for quantum technologies. We are looking forward to growing the institute to include more partners, collaborators and stakeholders from across research and industry in Finland.”
“Pooling the resources and extensive experience of the institutions is key particularly because the level of expertise in the labour force has been identified as a bottleneck for the development of quantum technology, added Sabrina Maniscalco, Professor at the University of Helsinki. “By combining and coordinating our resources, we will be able to grow expertise in new directions.”
Image credit:Pexels
Three of Finland’s top research institutions – Aalto University, “The University of Helsinki and VTT Technical Research Centre - are to pool their expertise and resources in research, education and innovation on quantum science and technology, under the umbrella of InstituteQ: The Finnish Quantum Institute.
“Our goals are threefold,” said Jukka Pekola, Professor at Aalto University. “Firstly, to coordinate our national research efforts;
Finland has already made notable strides in perhaps the most widely known sub-domain of quantum science, quantum computing, developing the hardware, software and communication solutions required to bring the next generation of computers from laboratories into the real world. VTT and IQM, for example, have partnered to build a 50-qubit quantum computer by 2024.
Further information online:
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