High Energy Collisional Activation of Biomolecules

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

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Abstract

Project Description The high energy collisional activation project will develop fundamental technology to improve proteomics and lipidomics. The integration of genomic and proteomic data has revealed deficiencies in the sequence coverage of proteins that are identified using conventional proteomic methods. Specifically, a minority of high value genomic variants in cancer are currently identified by state-of-the-art proteomics. This work will deploy new methods using high energy collisional activation tandem mass spectrometry on a MALDI-ToF/ToF platform that is coupled to a two dimensional high performance liquid chromatograph. The ability of HE-CAD to promote pathways of fragmentation (charge-remote fragmentation) that are not currently being used in proteomics is aimed at identifying the proteins that are expressed. The second aim is to apply high energy collisional activation to complex lipids, particularly those from pathogenic microorganisms. The lipids and the biosynthetic pathways that generate them in microbes are very different from mammals and thus are a potential target for therapies.