Title: "Peeking into the Social Life of Proteins: Developing High Throughput Workflows to Identify Protein Complexes in Bacteria"

ABSTRACT:

The goal of our DOE-funded research is to develop mass spectrometry-based high-throughput methods for identification and ultimately, characterization of stable protein complexes on an organism-wide scale. We utilize established methods based on immunoaffinity tags (e.g., tandem affinity purification, TAP) as well as a novel “tagless” strategy. Unlike TAP, our tagless strategy does not require genetic manipulation and hence it is applicable to systems for which genetic tagging is difficult or impossible. The model organism is Desulfovibrio vulgaris, an anaerobic bacterium capable of reducing heavy metals to their practically water-insoluble form. The capability to immobilize heavy metals in soils makes this bacterium an attractive bioremediation candidate to decontaminate Superfund sites under DOE jurisdiction.br>

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:

H. Ewa Witkowska received her Masters, with honors, and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Technical University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland. She arrived in the United States in 1985 and upon completing post-doctoral training at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), she specialized in protein analysis and mass spectrometry. She served as the Deputy Director of the Mass Spectrometry Facility at CHORI until 1999 and later joined Applied Biosystems as an Application Chemist. Dr. Witkowska is currently an Adjunct Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences. In addition, she co-directs the UCSF Sandler-Moore Mass Spectrometry Core Facility. Dr. Witkowska’s major research interests are in protein structure-function relationships, including the impact of mutations upon hemoglobin function, protein topology, intermolecular interactions and quantitative proteomics.

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