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

Nautilus Biotechnology

October 3, 2024

In our Translating Proteomics episode titled “Harnessing Proteoforms to Understand Life’s Complexity“, Parag and Andreas discussed why proteoforms are important in a theoretical sense. In this episode, Parag sits down with Northwestern University Professor and proteoform pioneer, Neil Kelleher to dive deep into the biology of proteoforms. They cover:

What proteoforms are
Examples of the importance of proteoforms
The scale of and technological advances needed to meet the challenges of proteoform biology

Find this episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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Translating Proteomics Ep 9 - Are Proteins a Myth?

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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.