Russian scientists have reported on the proteome
Squirrel Hunting
Natalia Bykova, InformnaukaThe 18th chromosome assigned to Russia in the international project "Human Proteome" has been decoded by 85%.
About 250 of its main proteins have been identified, and in 2013 scientists promise to find the rest. After that, the object of the study will be modified proteins, of which, presumably, at least 15,000. The authors of the Russian part of the project have already written a report on the first results of the work, which received positive assessments from the international commission of experts.
For the first time, the participating countries of the international project "Human Proteome" report on the preliminary results of research. Russian scientists representing about ten institutes of different departmental affiliation summed up their part of the project – the study of proteins encoded by the 18th chromosome.
According to the coordinator from the Russian side, Director of the V.N. Orekhovich Research Institute of Biomedical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Archakov, today's tasks are even more difficult than in the previous, comparable in scale and significance project "Human Genome", in which, by the way, Russia did not participate.
"Then it was necessary to inventory all genes as sources of information, now it is necessary to detect and quantitatively analyze the molecular machines themselves that are produced by genes – proteins," says A.I. Archakov. – Modern technologies are used, but not as powerful as in genomics. There is no universal, routine technology that would allow detecting proteins in the same way as the genome was previously decoded. In order to solve these tasks, it is necessary to constantly increase the sensitivity of methods up to the point of registering individual molecules in one microliter of biological fluid."
To date, about 250 major (unmodified) proteins encoded on the 18th chromosome (about 85%) have been identified. In 2013, the remaining proteins predicted from the genome should be detected, and their concentration in blood plasma and liver cells should be measured.
"For each protein, we selected several peptides, compiled calculated fragmentation maps for them, launched the method we developed for searching for this protein, calculated all chromatographic and mass spectrometric parameters," one of the project participants, a researcher at the Laboratory of Systems Biology, Candidate of Biological Sciences Artur Kopylov, tells about the course of the study. – In the end, the answer was given whether there is a desired peptide and protein, how many peptides for this protein we found. To date, 27 proteins remain undetected. We assume that they are very low-copy, that is, they are contained in extremely small concentrations. But we have already found promising ways to detect them, and the description of the approach we have developed has already been published and is the first statement in the world about achieving such a high sensitivity."
After that, the researchers intend to look for different isoforms of each of the proteins, as well as at least one post-translational modification of each protein. This knowledge will help to form an idea of a certain gold standard for the concentration of certain proteins and their modified forms in various localization sites, as well as a pathological deviation from this standard. The practical solution is personalized medicine, that is, the ability to diagnose dangerous diseases at an early stage (so in the text – VM). According to today's scientists, the proteins of the 18th chromosome are associated with diseases such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and some forms of cancer.
Prospects for the application of the results of proteomic studies are possible only if progressive methods are introduced into medicine to analyze the processes occurring in the cell, and, accordingly, sensitive devices that allow this approach to be applied.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru24.01.2013