Kansas City, Mo. (Nov. 29, 2006) – – The Stowers Institute’s Proteomics Center has collaborated with members of the Conaway Lab and the Bioinformatics Center to develop a novel method of analyzing protein complexes.

     The findings were posted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition today.

     In general, when protein complexes are analyzed by proteomics, the result is a simple list of proteins likely present in a complex. Stowers researchers have developed a new analytical approach that allows for the generation of additional biological information about the relative abundance of proteins within a complex.

     “This method defines a protein complex based on multiple purifications using several ‘bait’ proteins to provide distinct structural and functional information,” said Michael Washburn, Ph.D., Director of Proteomics. “The result is the potential ability to quantitatively and statistically compare multiprotein complexes in both normal and diseased states.”

     This statistically-supported approach will be used to characterize — at the structural and functional levels — a variety of multiprotein complexes, including those involved in transcription and chromatin remodeling.

     “The methods described in this paper provide a straightforward way to obtain quantitative information from mass spectrometry data,” said Joan Conaway, Ph.D., Investigator. “This is very important for our work defining transcriptional regulatory proteins and their interaction networks. What’s really special about this approach is that it doesn’t require isotopic labeling of cells or use of special labeling reagents, so the quantitative data can be obtained relatively easily, and almost routinely.”

     Contributing authors to the paper included Andrew Paoletti, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate in Proteomics; Tari Parmely, Research Specialist I in the Conaway Lab; Chieri Tomomori-Sato, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate in the Conaway Lab; Shigeo Sato, Ph.D., Research Specialist I in the Conaway Lab; Dongxiao Zhu, Ph.D., Biostatistician in Bioinformatics; Ronald C. Conaway, Ph.D., Investigator; Joan Weliky Conaway, Ph.D., Investigator; Laurence Florens, Ph.D., Managing Director of Proteomics; and Michael Washburn, Ph.D., Director of Proteomics.

About the Stowers Institute
     Housed in a 600,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility on a 10-acre campus in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research conducts basic research on fundamental processes of cellular life. Through its commitment to collaborative research and the use of cutting-edge technology, the Institute seeks more effective means of preventing and curing disease. The Institute was founded by Jim and Virginia Stowers, two cancer survivors who have created combined endowments of $2 billion in support of basic research of the highest quality.