Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each containing a copy of our DNA. This DNA is the instruction manual for a cell, and from this instruction manual millions of proteins--the working parts of a cell--are built. These proteins have a variety of different responsibilities in the cell, and just like you and I, a single protein may have different responsibilities from moment-to-moment and throughout its lifetime. Additionally, proteins work together in teams to achieve common goals. Thus proteins form intricate, diverse, and dynamic communities.
Numerous human diseases are the result of improper protein function. Therefore, work at the QBI, in collaboration with the Convergence Zone at the Gladstone Institute is focused on studying how protein function is responsible for human disease.
We use the powerful tool of mass spectrometry to study proteins. This approach allows us to monitor thousands of proteins at a time and measure: how protein abundance differs between diseased and healthy cells, how protein function changes over time, protein movement within different parts of the cell, what proteins work together, etc. We have used mass spectrometry to study protein dynamics in diseases such as HIV, Herpes virus, Hepatitis C, and cancer to uncover how improper protein function leads to human disease and how to target such functions to restore human health.