Separating the men from the boys
by Grant Drenkow
When one talks about nanotechnology it’s usually about building something small, maybe out of nanotubes or nanoparticles. It’s about creating a structure that is stronger, lighter weight, more durable, more flexible, or in some way better when built from the ground up. It’s rarely (if ever) about tearing something apart or breaking something down into smaller elements.
In the world of proteomics it’s about studying proteins, particularly their structures and the role they play in living organisms. It’s about finding a specific protein of interest in a complex sample, or more specifically separating the protein of interest away from the abundant proteins in the sample. Not exactly separating the men from the boys or the forest from the trees - but rather it’s the inverse. It’s separating the baby from the giants or the needle away from the stack of logs. Not an easy task when you’re dealing with nanoscale devices like proteins.
In this article a group at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, used a liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) instrument with three columns to find the protein of interest. They were able to separate the specific protein of interest away from the huge number of abundant proteins in the sample.
Check out the application examples on the Agilent Nanotechnology website (www.agilent.com/find/nano) or click here to see this specific example of using an LC-MS for nanotechnology research.
