New technologies for protein analysis

Introduction

The genomic revolution resulted in the generation of whole DNA sequences of many organisms - from simple viruses to humans. Although genomics promised to open up new avenues of research, including novel pharmaceuticals and gene therapies, it is clear that this was only the first step. Whilst genomics results in a sequence of DNA, proteomics is the functional analysis of the structures encoded by these sequences. Much progress has been made in the field of protein analysis over the past few years, although the area is expanding, with more work to be done.

This meeting sought to investigate the current limitations in the field of instrumentation and data processing for proteomics, introduce STFC technologies to the life science community and broker new research partnerships. The workshop was held in collaboration with the Sensors & Instrumentation KTN.

Morning presentations detailed the needs of the biological community from three perspectives. Rob Beynon of Liverpool University opened the session with a presentation, breaking the instrumentation needs of the community down into three categories - the separation of biomolecules, analytical systems and bioinformatics. The latter topic was then discussed in more detail by Sarah Hunter of the Cambridge-based European Bioinformatics Institute, covering: the storage and back up, data movement, the analysis and interpretation of data, and user-access of data. In the final talk, Martin Welch of Cambridge University gave his perception of the technology constraints his laboratory faces. The rest of the day was taken up with presentations of technologies; from the use of Bayes Theorem to predict tertiary protein structure, to the combination of CERN and ESA technologies to produce a new multi-channel detector for high content imaging.

The workshop was oversubscribed, with 55 people attending on the day.

Programme