Have you ever googled mass spectrometry? The search returns 23,600,000 hits, underscoring its extensive use world wide in a broad range of applications and disciplines. The use of mass spectrometry at the University of Arizona is as equally extensive with a large range of use by faculty, postdoctoral fellows, employees and students taking advantage of its impressive power. Due to this extensive use and the collective expertise that exists at the University of Arizona in this area, the Mass Spectrometry Consortium was formed in 2006. The Mass Spectrometry Consortium is co-directed by Drs. Serrine S. Lau, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Vicki H. Wysocki, Professor of Chemistry. Various mass-spectrometry based units are part of this consortium infrastructure including Molecular Mass Spectrometry housed in Old Chemistry, Inorganic Mass Spectrometry housed in Geo Sciences and the Arizona Proteomics Consortium housed collectively in the BIO5 Institute, College of Pharmacy, and Old Chemistry. The Water Contamination Center in Gould Simpson is also planned to join the Mass Spectrometry Consortium. To view the organizational structure of the Arizona Mass Spectrometry Consortium click here: http://massspectrometryconsortium.arizona.edu/.

Of special importance to many investigators is the use of mass spectrometry within the context of biologically relevant systems and applications. As such, proteomics at the University of Arizona has grown exponentially and with great momentum over the past 6-8 years. The study of "proteomics", or the protein complement of the cell, is considered the counterpart to the study of the genetic complement of the cell, or genomics. Proteomics is a scientific effort to identify, characterize and assess protein function in living cells. Scientists look for normal proteins, and when they find them, things are as they should be. When new or altered proteins are found that are associated with diseased states, this is a signal/marker for further examination. Human proteomics research focuses on determining which of the millions of proteins or combinations of proteins made up by human cells are involved in the cause or in the persistence of disease.

This is an exciting field since the human proteome (i.e: the assembly of proteins in any one cell), is always changing and many opportunities exist during these stages of change for insight into the differences between normal and diseased states as well as for therapy. With that in mind, the Arizona Proteomics Consortium (http://www.arizonaproteomics.org/) strives to remain current in terms of instrumentation and its method development capabilities, to better serve the scientific endeavors of University of Arizona investigators.

Proteomics relies heavily on analytical and bio-analytical techniques to probe proteins. The key to proteomics is partial protein sequence analysis coupled to computer-assisted searching of genomic and protein sequence databases (see figure above).

Starting from a sample and following some good old-fashioned biochemical techniques, individual or assemblies of proteins to be identified (either normal or aberrant in nature), are cleaved into smaller pieces known as peptides. These peptides are then introduced into and analyzed with mass spectrometers that give mass information and/or structural information about these peptides. Computer programs then use all of this information to search available databases for the protein origin of these peptides. With these tools, scientists can identify specific proteins, and characterize which proteins interact with each other.

The Proteomics Core of the University of Arizona, which was started in 1998, sponsored by the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center (SWEHSC Director, Serrine S. Lau, http://swehsc.pharmacy.arizona.edu/ ) is currently housed in the College of Pharmacy. In January 2006 the core expanded to a centralized Arizona Proteomics Consortium (Director, George Tsaprailis; Associate Director, Linda Breci) and is supported by the Arizona Cancer Center, Arizona Research Laboratories, BIO5, Department of Chemistry and SWEHSC. Due to rapidly changing research needs, this facility has seen its workload more than triple in the past few years in addition to expanding into new exciting areas such as imaging and profiling of proteins in frozen tissue by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. New instrumentation for proteomics has also been recently added to this facility through various successful funding opportunities.

In addition to being targets for drugs, proteins can be targets for prevention of diseases such as cancer. For instance, if doctors know a specific gene or protein is associated with cancer and find it when it first develops, they may be able to block it before it sends incorrect messages to cells.

Computers and bioinformatics tools are a tremendous help in this overall endeavor. They can review thousands and millions of pieces of data very quickly, and they work day and night. That allows researchers to identify patterns associated with particular diseases. As more and more of patterns are identified, newer and better drugs can be developed to stop faulty genes and proteins, hopefully without causing the side effects associated with certain current disease therapies.

Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center
University of Arizona College of Pharmacy, Room 244
PO Box 210207, Tucson, AZ, USA  85721-0207
swehsc-info@pharmacy.arizona.edu
520-626-5594
520-626-6944(FAX)