Preparing undergraduates to participate in the post-genome era: A capstone laboratory experience in proteomics
✍ Scribed by Eric S. Eberhardt; Johanna Hansen; Luke Riservato; Melissa Cole; Brandon Smaglo; Paul Szaniawski
- Publisher
- The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- Year
- 2003
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 314 KB
- Volume
- 31
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1470-8175
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
Proteomics is one of the important new disciplines to emerge from the genome sequencing projects of the last decade. In order to introduce our students to the techniques and promise of this emerging field, a capstone laboratory experience has been developed. The exercise involves multiple aspects of proteomics research including microbial culturing methods, two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis techniques, matrix‐assisted laser desorption‐ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry, and database mining. Over a 12‐week semester, students design their own experiments and apply a proteomic approach to investigate the heat shock response in Escherichia coli. In the trial presented in this article, students successfully identified several major heat shock proteins. The laboratory outlined here can be readily adapted to explore a wide variety of responses in metabolic pathways or responses resulting from other environmental insults or stresses. Additionally, the laboratory can be modified to explore the proteomes of organelles, tissues, and other model organisms.