Dustin Hofheins

Chem 3600.

Activity 3

The main problem that Dr. T’s lab was trying to solve was that there are

proteins that are in serum that are linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The thought

is that if you can detect these proteins and perhaps catch the disease at an early

enough stage to reduce it from being terminal.¹ The main problem with identifying

these small proteins, through mass spec, is that they have a small molecular weight

and there is a very small percent of them in the serum. Also, these small proteins

are bound to a molecule that has a large molecular weight, serum albumin. Serum

albumin makes up a 57-71% of the serum.¹ This lab had to find a way to isolate

these small proteins so that they can be analyzed.

The solution to this problem that the lab has produced is to use acetonitrile

precipitation to precipitate the large and abundant proteins out of serum.¹ By using

this procedure, the serum albumin will be denatured, causing them to be removed

from the serum and also breaking the bonds to those small proteins thus increasing

there abundance in the serum.¹ Then, using cLC-MS analysis, they could detect those

small proteins because all the other proteins have been removed from the solution

serum.

Reference:

1. Analysis of Low-Abundance, Low-Molecular-Weight Serum Proteins Using Mass Spectrometry

Karen Merrell,a* Katie Southwick,ab* Steven W. Graves,a M. Sean Esplin,c Nathan E. Lewis,a and Craig D. Thulinab