Office for Research and Graduate Studies (ORAGS)

Scientific Objectives: 

The mission of the Proteomics Core Facility is to promote the understanding and use of the study of Proteomics strategies by placing the most modern gel electrophoresis, Mass Spectrometry and bioinformatics protein analysis tools into the hands of researchers.  We strive to provide a central resource that is available for consultation regarding the investigator’s particular research, as well as to provide an environment that fosters education, sharing of ideas and experimental knowledge.  The Proteomics Core Facility is available for specialized and routine analysis of proteins and peptides.

Personnel:

Dr. Catherine Fenselau was the founding Director of the Facility, and currently serves as Consulting Director.  Dr. Fenselau is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UM College Park, and adjunct professor in Biochemistry at UMB.  She is a past president of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, is a founding Council member of the international Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) and is currently the first president of US HUPO. Her laboratory develops proteomics methods, and applies these to study mechanisms of acquired drug resistance in cancer cells.

Dr. Peter Gutierrez is the Facility Director. He is responsible for the daily operation of the Facility, consulting with users, setting priorities in the workflow, and supervising Mr. Syed. He is the principal operator of both mass spectrometers, our LCQ ion trap that provides MSMS data for microsequencing peptides, and our MALDI-TOF spectrometer utilized for a variety of measurements including whole proteins and mass fingerprints of peptides from protein digestions.  He also runs the software for protein identifications.  Dr. Gutierrez provides descriptions of the proteomics core capabilities for invstigators’grant applications as well as letters of support.  Dr Gutierrez is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has spent 27 years at UMB conducting NIH-funded research on free radicals, with an emphasis on mechanisms of both carcinogenesis and anti-cancer drug activity.

Contact Information:

Peter Gutierrez, Ph.D. 8-0369 (Office)  8-7499 (lab)  BRB 7-050
pgutierr@som.umaryland.edu F
Faculty Advisory Committee:

Angela Brodie PhD                              Professor, Department of Pharmacology
Dhan Kalvakolanu PhD                        Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology
John Hamlyn PhD                               Associate Professor, Department of Physiology. 
Sandra McLeskey RN PhD                  Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Nicholas Ambulos PhD                        Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology
Jay Hunter                                          Laboratory Manager, Greenebaum Cancer Center

Equipment

Two Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis: We offer state-of-the-art equipment from Proteome Systems Technologies, which is fully compatible with all the rest of the high-throughput platform. This includes a Shimadzu Xcise robot, which excises, digests, cleans up the proteins from the gel, deposits them on an x,y sample platform and adds the matrix as required for automated MALDI analysis.

Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer: The Axima MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer from Kratos/Shimadzu provides a combination of high-mass accuracy, high resolution and high sensitivity. The MS includes high-throughput sample handling using a 384-spot microtiter sample format MALDI target on an x,y stage, mass correlated acceleration and a curved field reflectron. Bioinformatics will provide protein identification based on proteolytic peptide maps.

A Finnigan ProteomeX Ion Trap Spectrometer interfaced via Electrospray, and offering tandem mass spectrometry capability and TurboSEQUEST software for protein bioinformatics. This is a high-throughput system with reverse phase columns for rapid MS/MS analysis of peptides and, thereby, identification of proteins in mixtures.

An AKTA FPLC Protein Purification System from Amersham is a biocompatible, high-performance liquid chromatography system especially designed and proven worldwide for fast and easy purification of proteins on a wide variety of columns.

Compugen Z3 Software for analysis of gel arrays. This is state-of-the-art software to facilitate digitization, annotation and quantitative comparisons of gel arrays.

Proteomics Facility Services and Charges:

                                                                                    Staff          Self- Service*        

2D Gel     (first gel)                                                       @   $250         $150    
Additional gels (up to 3 additional gels)                           @   $75           $65  
Digitize Gel (includes 1st hr Z3)                                      @   $30           $20   
Additional Z3 Analysis/hour                                            @   $30           $20     
X-cise Robot Set-up and 1st spot                                    @   $160         N/A  
X-cise Robot Additional  spots                                        @   $10           N/A  
FPLC Protein Purification (per sample)                            @   $100         $50 
MALDI /First sample**                                                   @   $60           $40  
MALDI /additional samples**                                          @   $30           $10  
LCLC/MSMS (1st hr)                                                     @   $400         N/A 
LCLC/MSMS (add’l/hr)                                                   @   $50           N/A  
Protein DataBase Search (SS) /hr                                  @   $75           $30  
Special Service________________                                 @   $____       $____  
 
**Requires investigators to perform their own sample digests