Hochauflösendes Elektrosprayionisierungs-Hybrid-Tandem-Massenspektrometer

• Subject Area: Basic Research in Biology and Medicine
• Term: Funded in 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278834748

Transcriptome analysis done in my laboratory revealed that significant changes in transcription occurred in the course of mammalian evolution. However, the phenotype of cells and organisms are determined by the actual amount of protein and their posttranslational modifications. The proteomics work in the last ten years revealed that there is only a loose correlation between transcript levels and protein levels. Therefore, to understand how phenotypes change in the course of evolution it is essential to quantitatively analyze the proteomes of several tissues in different species at key developmental stages. These analysis will allow us for example to verify whether newly evolved genes are translated into stable proteins; how the abundance of splice variants changed during evolution; whether some of the so-called long non-coding RNAs actually, as predicted, are translated into stable protein products and how this changed during mammalian evolution; to understand the dosage compensation made necessary due to the degeneration of the Y-chromosomes and the concomitant X chromosome inactivation in females; whether the extensive transcription in testis is compensated by decreased translation or degradation of the gene products; and whether the "out of the testis" hypothesis of newly evolved genes is valid. Other users of the instrument will analyze chaperone mediated protein folding (B. Bukau), the SUMO proteome (F. Melchior), and neurodegenerative diseases (T. Jahn).

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Hochauflösendes Elektrosprayionisierungs-Hybrid-Tandem-Massenspektrometer
• Instrumentation Group: 1700 Massenspektrometer
• Applicant Institution: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• Leader: Professor Henrik Kaessmann, Ph.D.