Method of the Year 2009
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Proteomics
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11+ votes
5- votes
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Proteome-wide cellular protein concentrations of the human pathogen Leptospira interrogans
- Original article citation: Nature 460," 762 - 765, (2009).
- Categories: Proteomics, Systems biology, and Cell biology
- Recommended by: Veronique Kiermer on 08/14/2009 03:33PM GMT
- Reasons for recommending:
Aebersold and colleagues achieve absolute quantification of protein concentration at the proteome level (83% of the mass spec-detectable proteome) for a microbe of moderate complexity (3,600+ predicted ORFs based on the genomic sequence). That's a feat! And it is very elegant as they use a clever combination of approaches. Proteotypic peptides-based absolute measurements for a subset of 'anchor' proteins provide calibration points to translate relative abundance measurements, obtained by spectral counting, into absolute quantitative values for the rest of the proteins. And they show it works by verifying with cryo-electron tomography. This technology allows the comparison of absolute abundance of different proteins across different samples (as opposed to typical mass spec approaches in which you compare relative abundance of proteins across samples, using one as reference to infer how the others compare). In my opinion, this is a big step forward and it opens up a lot of possibilities for using mass spec in systems biology.
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