School of Life Sciences

Proteomics

The Sussex Proteomics Centre is a state-of-the-art facility, representing an investment of approximately £1.5m. It is situated in newly refurbished laboratories and aims to provide internationally-competitive facilities for the characterisation of proteins and peptides.

The Centre provides a range of equipment and expertise to enable the study of samples from a wide variety of cell and tissue sources and can provide this as a service to both internal and external customers.

For 2-D gel analyses of complex samples, the Centre is equipped with IPGPhor? IEF (1^st -dimension) and Ettan-DALT? 12 (2^nd -dimension) apparatus. A Typhoon Trio variable mode imager and Decyder 2D software are available in-house for capture and analysis of gel images, and permits the use of DIGE 2-D Fluorescence Difference Gel Electrophoresis workflows, facilitating the most accurate and reproducible gel-based analysis of differential protein expression.

For LC-MS, chromatography-based sample prefractionation using either Agilent 1200 series or Dionex U3000 nano-LC systems is also available and allows the application of high reproducibility liquid-phase multi-dimensional protein identification techniques (MUDPiT), with particular benefits for biomarker discovery and in the analysis of hydrophobic/membrane associated proteins.

Mass-spectrometry instrumentation currently includes two ThermoFinnigan LTQ linear ion traps and a LTQ Orbitrap XL. An Agilent 6520 Q-ToF with Chip cube interface was added to the facility recently and provides an alternative platform for high-throughput, high accuracy LC/MS and intact protein analyses.

As well as high-sensitivity protein identification, the facility is equipped for the analysis of a variety of post-translational modifications, and a range of label-based quantitative proteomics analyses including Dimethyl labelling, SILAC and iTRAQ, as well as label-free methods (spectral counting).

For further information please contact Dr Lucas Bowler L.D.Bowler@sussex.ac.uk