Innovative Technique Pinpoints Protein Locations

Innovative Technique Pinpoints Protein Locations, Helping Scientists Figure out Their Functions

Feb. 12, 2013 — An innovative technique which pinpoints protein locations and helps researchers unravel the protein's functions has been developed by the researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers who recently moved from MIT to the Ulsan National Institute of Science (UNIST) explain.

Scientist have now developed a technique that can tag all of the proteins in a particular region of a cell, allowing them to more accurately map those proteins. (Credit: Image courtesy of UNIST)

Scientist from MIT have now developed a technique that can tag all of the proteins in a particular region of a cell, allowing them to more accurately map those proteins.

"There was no previous high-quality map of the matrix subdomain of mitochondria, and now we have one" said Alice Ting, the Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Chemistry at MIT. "We're still really far from that goal, but the overarching motivation is to get closer to that goal."

This innovative technique combines the strengths of two existing techniques -- microscopic imaging and mass spectrometry -- to map proteins in a specific cell location and generate a comprehensive list of all the proteins in that area.

In a paper appearing in the Jan. 31 online edition of Science, Rhee and colleagues used the new technique to identify nearly 500 proteins located in the mitochondrial matrix -- the innermost compartment found in mitochondria, which can be thought of as the power houses of the cell where energy is generated. Previous attempts to map the entire set of proteins in the matrix (proteome) yielded a list of only 37 proteins.

Protein labeling

To demonstrate the technique's power, the researchers created a comprehensive list of the proteins found in the mitochondrial matrix. Most of a cell's energy generation takes place in mitochondria, as well as many biosynthetic processes.

Using the new method, the team increased the number of proteins known to be located in the mitochondrial matrix. "There was no previous high-quality map of the matrix subdomain of mitochondria, and now we have one," says Ting, adding that this new wealth of information should help biologists to learn more about the functions of many of those proteins.

Already, the team has found that an enzyme called ppox -- involved in synthesizing heme, the iron-porphyrin complex found in hemoglobin -- is not located where biologists had thought it was. As heme precursors move through the biosynthetic pathway, they are shuttled to different parts of the cell. Finding that ppox is in the matrix means that there must be unknown transporter proteins bringing heme precursors into the matrix, Ting says.

The researchers are now investigating proteins found in another compartment of the mitochondria, the intermembrane space. They are also modifying the chemistry of the labeling system so they can use it for other tasks such as mapping the topology of membrane proteins and detecting specific protein-protein interactions.

The lead scientists of this research are Hyun-Woo Rhee (former MIT postdoc, currently Assistant Professor, School of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering, UNIST) and Peng Zou, who received a PhD from MIT in 2012.

source:sciencedaily

Red Brain, Blue Brain: Republicans and Democrats Process Risk Differently, Research Finds

Feb. 13, 2013 — A team of political scientists and neuroscientists has shown that liberals and conservatives use different parts of the brain when they make risky decisions, and these regions can be used to predict which political party a person prefers. The new study suggests that while genetics or parental influence may play a significant role, being a Republican or Democrat changes how the brain functions.

Republicans and Democrats differ in the neural mechanisms activated while performing a risk-taking task. Republicans more strongly activate their right amygdala, associated with orienting attention to external cues. Democrats have higher activity in their left posterior insula, associated with perceptions of internal physiological states. This activation also borders the temporal-parietal junction, and therefore may reflect a difference in internal physiological drive as well as the perception of the internal state and drive of others. (Credit: From: Darren Schreiber, Greg Fonzo, Alan N. Simmons, Christopher T. Dawes, Taru Flagan, James H. Fowler, Martin P. Paulus. Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e52970 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052970)

Dr. Darren Schreiber, a researcher in neuropolitics at the University of Exeter, has been working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, San Diego on research that explores the differences in the way the brain functions in American liberals and conservatives. The findings are published Feb. 13 in the journalPLOS ONE.

In a prior experiment, participants had their brain activity measured as they played a simple gambling game. Dr. Schreiber and his UC San Diego collaborators were able to look up the political party registration of the participants in public records. Using this new analysis of 82 people who performed the gambling task, the academics showed that Republicans and Democrats do not differ in the risks they take. However, there were striking differences in the participants' brain activity during the risk-taking task.

Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, a region associated with social and self-awareness. Meanwhile Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala, a region involved in the body's fight-or-flight system. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk.

In fact, brain activity in these two regions alone can be used to predict whether a person is a Democrat or Republican with 82.9% accuracy. By comparison, the longstanding traditional model in political science, which uses the party affiliation of a person's mother and father to predict the child's affiliation, is only accurate about 69.5% of the time. And another model based on the differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with only 71.6% accuracy.

The model also outperforms models based on differences in genes. Dr. Schreiber said: "Although genetics have been shown to contribute to differences in political ideology and strength of party politics, the portion of variation in political affiliation explained by activity in the amygdala and insula is significantly larger, suggesting that affiliating with a political party and engaging in a partisan environment may alter the brain, above and beyond the effect of heredity."

These results may pave the way for new research on voter behaviour, yielding better understanding of the differences in how liberals and conservatives think. According to Dr. Schreiber: "The ability to accurately predict party politics using only brain activity while gambling suggests that investigating basic neural differences between voters may provide us with more powerful insights than the traditional tools of political science."

source:sciencedaily.

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