VIEW OF THE ENTIRETY OF PROTEINS IN THE CELL

Proteins fulfill many functions in our cells: They are involved in metabolic pathways, regulate the transport of nutrients or act as messengers. With the help of mass spectrometers, it is now possible to determine the entirety of proteins, the proteome, of a cell. This technology is also used at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern (TUK). The federal government and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate have provided around 800,000 euros for a new, particularly sensitive and high-resolution mass spectrometer. The large-scale device helps to better understand the role of certain proteins in various diseases, such as cancer, in order to develop new therapies, for example.

There are many different molecules, such as proteins, in a cell. An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 different proteins are active in a human cell. Thanks to the latest techniques, it is possible to quantify them precisely. At the TUK, Professor Dr. Zuzana Storchová is working on this topic. She has been researching in this field for a long time. In 2012, together with renowned Munich protein expert Professor Matthias Mann and other colleagues, she was the first to investigate the consequences for cells when individual chromosomes occur in greater numbers. In healthy human cells, there is a double set of chromosomes with 23 pairs. In cancer cells, for example, other sets are often found. The team investigated the question of how too much genetic material changes the quantity of proteins.

"Such work helps us to understand which protein has an altered function in which disease. It is therefore also important to compare the proteomes of healthy and diseased cells," says Storchová, who conducts research in the Molecular Genetics department.

This is possible with the new generation of mass spectrometers. "We can use it to analyze almost all the proteins in a cell at the same time," she continues. With this technique, the protein molecules are identified and quantified based on their mass. In principle, they are weighed. Similar to a fingerprint, each molecule has a characteristic value.

Storchová and her research colleague Dr. Markus Räschle's team are investigating, among other things, how the proteome in cancer cells differs from that in healthy cells. "We want to understand why certain proteins are more abundant there and others less," says the professor. With the new large-scale device, they can detect such key proteins more easily. Understanding these fundamentals is important in order to develop new or better therapies in the future.

The new large-scale research device is located on the Kaiserslautern campus in the Center for Mass Spectrometry-Analytics in the newly renovated Building 23 and is headed by Professor Dr. Michael Schroda from the Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology together with Professor Storchová. They are supported by Dr. Frederik Sommer and Dr. Markus Räschle in carrying out the highly complex experiments. The group of bioinformatician Junior Professor Dr. Timo Mühlhaus is responsible for the bioinformatic analysis of the data obtained. The laboratory is also open to working groups from other departments such as chemistry. The mass spectrometer can be used to study not only proteins, but also other molecules such as lipids.

If you have any questions, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Zuzana Storchová
Department of Molecular Genetics
E-Mail: storchova[at]biologie.uni-kl.de
Phone: 0631 205-3250