Takes you to the main page for this section

Text only

FishProm at the University of Aberdeen

Fish Proteomics

A rainbow trout proteomics project in the School of Biological Sciences by Sam Martin and Dominic F. Houlihan

This website contains information on proteins identified on 2DE gels from salmonid fish tissue extracts. You can locate these proteins on the 2DE maps or retrieve in a table all the protein entries.

Last updated: 1/03/05

Introduction

The FishProm project aims to use proteomics as a diagnostic tool for the effects of nutrition and environmental fluctuations on the proteins synthesised in salmonid fish tissues. Proteomics, the study of the expressed protein complement of the genome, offers a powerful way of taking a snapshot of the state cells and tissues at a given time, for example in response to external stimuli. It is proteins, rather than genes or mRNA, that control and execute biological functions and, thus, it is expected that a proteomic approach will yield a more accurate and comprehensive picture of the global response of the cell to a given stimulus.

Proteomic methodology depends upon the separation of proteins by 2 dimensional electrophoresis (2DE), and the visualisation of the several hundred proteins in a tissue. 2DE allows these proteins to be monitored in parallel, yielding a global picture of changes in protein profile. A map of the proteins in the liver of rainbow trout has been constructed in which proteins are recorded in terms of identity, molecular weight, isoelectric point (pI) and abundance.

In order to make biological inferences from proteomic data, it is essential to establish the identity of the proteins under investigation. To that end, we have employed MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to generate peptide mass fingerprints of many of the proteins visible on our gels. Identification is difficult but has speeded up enormously recently with the release of more and more information on fish genomes, from which predicted peptide mass fingerprints can be inferred. So far we have identified close to a hundred of the spots on the map, which in our estimation means that the map can now be put to practical use. Indeed, in our investigations into fish biology and aquaculture-related problems, such as starvation and diet composition, we have deduced from proteomic data how a number of metabolic pathways affected by these problems.

ˆˆ back to top