Protein fingerprinting made easy by Croatian scientists
Zagreb, 12.12.2007. - Combining some traditional
experimental methods of molecular biology with computational methods of
artificial intelligence, a group of researchers from Ruđer Bošković
Instititute and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from
Zagreb, Croatia, demonstrated a novel approach for producing ‘protein
fingerprints’ of diverse tissues. This result could lead to the
development of new convenient methods in medical diagnostics.
Being directly responsible for a great majority of
processes in living cells, proteins are the most important class of
biological molecules. They are literally ‘molecular machines’ which
facilitate the import of nutrients into the cell and expulsion of waste
products from it, production of energy and transportation of material
within the cell, as well as cellular respiration and mechanical motion.
Due to their immense importance, proteins are among the most vigorously
studied topics in biology today. More...
Over half a million different
protein species have been identified in humans, each of them related to
particular types of human cells. Different tissues, such as muscles,
bones, nerves or skin, are distinguished by the unique ‘protein
fingerprint’ – the specific relative abundance of different proteins
contained in their cells. Moreover, pathological changes in any type of
tissue necessarily have an impact on the tissue’s protein composition,
and therefore protein fingerprinting can be used for early diagnostics
and identification of various diseases such as tumors or infections.
Unfortunately, producing a good quality protein fingerprint has until
now been a complicated, time consuming and expensive enterprise.
However, based on their research of tumors conducted on horseradish
plant tissue, the Croatian team proposed a novel approach to bypass
this obstacle. Applying computational methods of artificial
intelligence, they ‘trained’ a computer to precisely extract the most
relevant information on the protein fingerprint from rather ‘fuzzy’
experimental data obtained by 1D protein electrophoresis, a well known,
simple, quick and cheap experimental method of molecular biology. Their
result hence opens up the possibility for development of a cheap,
convenient and reliable method for producing good quality protein
fingerprints.
The results of the Croatian team will be published in the January issue of “Proteomics”, the most established scientific journal in the field of proteomics. (DOI 10.1002/pmic.200700555)
Source: PR - Ruđer Bošković Instititute
