Back in April, I elaborated a bit on what metabolomics is and how it’s used in ME/CFS research, as an important component of the “Data Analysis” stage of the research process. If you missed that one or want to read it again, you can check it out on our website.
This time, I want to cover proteomics since the two are often talked about in tandem. In some senses, proteomics gives insight into what the body intends to do and metabolomics into what the body is actually doing.
Proteomics is the study of the proteome, which is the collective set of proteins expressed at a given time.
When studying the proteome, there are a few angles to look at, which comprise different types of proteomics. The three major types of proteomics are: expression, structural, and functional. As the names imply, expression proteomics evaluates the expression levels of proteins, structural proteomics investigates the 3-dimensional structure of proteins, and functional proteomics involves studying protein functions and interactions.
Expression proteomics is the most common type used in ME/CFS research. Expression proteomics can be either quantitative (absolute concentration) or qualitative (relative concentration) and is particularly relevant for ME/CFS for two main reasons. First, expression proteomics can be used to identify proteins that are differentially expressed between conditions. For example, a study can measure if the amount of certain proteins is different between people with ME/CFS and healthy controls or people with similar conditions. Second, quantitative expression proteomics is an important part of biomarker discovery.
In order to study such a large set of proteins, they first need to be separated from each other. After separation they can then be individually identified. An example of this separation and identification is liquid chromatography (LC; separating proteins by size) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS; identifying proteins by their mass to charge ratio), designated as LC-MS/MS.
At Open Medicine Foundation’s (OMF’s) ME/CFS Collaborative Center at Uppsala, Dr. Jonas Bergquist is an expert in LC-MS/MS, which he uses to quantify proteins for a multitude of projects in ME/CFS. In particular, he will use this technique for proteomics included in BioQuest, OMF’s large-scale biomarker study.
Read more about BioQuest on our website.
Thanks to the generosity of our global OMF community, Phase 1 of BioQuest is ready to launch. With 1,000 samples now secured for testing, we are ready to raise funds for Phase 2— the opportunity for additional testing and the critical validation process to ensure BioQuest delivers the most rigorous and data-driven results possible.
Please join us today in support of this groundbreaking research for a brighter tomorrow.
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