Translating Proteomics Episode 9 – Are Proteins a Myth? With Special Guest Neil Kelleher

Chapters

• 00:00 – Introduction to proteoforms
• 03:36 – Why the term “proteoform” was coined
• 11:55 – Are proteins a myth?
• 13:39 – Evidence for the importance of proteoforms
• 22:45 – The Human Proteoform Atlas and Project
• 30:09 – How many proteoforms are there?
• 33:32 – Technological developments required for routine proteoform analysis
• 41:45 – Takeaways with Parag and Andreas

Examples of the power of proteoforms covered in this episode

• Recent work from Neil’s lab showing blood proteoforms can help predict liver transplant success (Melani et al. 2022).
• Work form Ying Ge’s lab showing changes in troponin proteoforms correlate with varying degrees of heart disease (Zhang et al. 2011).
• The BioTyper – a mass spectrometry-based device that can identify different kinds of microbes.

Additional proteoform resources

• The Human Proteoform Atlas webpage
• Publication describing The Human Proteoform Atlas (Hollas et al. 2022)
• Publication discussing how many human proteoforms there are (Aebersold et al. 2018)
• Animation – Proteoform Analysis on the Nautilus Proteome Analysis Platform

All Translating Proteomics episode links

Ep 1 – Poised for a Proteomics Breakthrough
Ep 2 – Putting Proteomics to Work
Ep 3 – Biology in Space and Time
Ep 4 – Single-protein Biomarkers Don’t Cut It
Ep 5 – Why the Dogma around Biology’s Central Dogma Is Wrong
Ep 6 – The Future of AI in Biomedicine
Ep 7 – Harnessing Proteoforms to Understand Life’s Complexity
Ep 8 – Expanding the Druggable Universe with Proteomics
Ep 9 – Are proteins a myth? With Special Guest Neil Kelleher
Ep 10 – Protein Function 201 with Kathryn Lilley
Ep 11 – Plasma Proteomics – The Dream and the Nightmare
Ep 12 – A New Era in Alzheimer’s Research with Sarah DeVos
Ep 13 – AI and Biotech – The Promise and the Pitfalls with Vijay Pande and Matt McIlwain