Mission

Interdisciplinary Research Network: In Situ Functional Proteomics Technology

Significant advances in understanding normal cell function and in developing successful strategies for therapeutic intervention in disease will increasingly depend on the ability to study protein complexes and networks in the cellular environment. Such complexes may be localised in cellular compartments or at the cell membrane, they may be dynamic, they may depend on specific post-translational modifications, and they may require interactions with other macromolecules. Optical techniques can, in principle, provide all these types of information from intact cells and tissues without disrupting the normal protein or cell function.

In practice the realization of this potential will depend on the development and application of new technologies in molecular biology, chemical biology, biophotonics, nano-optics, instrumentation, bioinformatics, biochemical proteomics, and network modelling. The Optical Proteomics Interdisciplinary Research Network brings together research groups from these different disciplines to develop these technologies and apply them to real clinical problems.

Network objectives include:

• The development of a high throughput optical platform to enable proteomic screens at a genome-wide level;

• The development of advanced data analysis tools for optical proteomic technologies;

• A focus on protein events that occur at the plasma membrane, an important cellular site where environmental changes are detected in situ;

• The development and application of novel fluorescent probes and probes for post-translational modifications;

• The development and application of new mathematical tools for the description of the dynamic nature of the protein interactome, to be made accessible though an optical proteomic technology.