May 27th (Thu) Graduate Seminar / Professor Jongseo Kim

Mass spectrometry based macromolecular interactomics

Mass spectrometric profiling of biomolecular interactions such as protein to protein or protein to nucleic acids provides critical information for function, yet is often difficult to accurately capture and define in system-wide manner. To do so, the innate limitation of mass spectrometry compared to next generation sequencing approaches, which is the incapability of molecular amplification via such as PCR, needs to be overcome. In this regard, the analytical development for ultrasensitive and unbiased quantification platform is highly desirable for the next level of molecular interactomics, i.e., system-wide profiling of molecular interactions. Here, I will introduce my recent development for ultrasensitive liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC-MS) system and accurate proteome quantification platform to capture molecular interactions more comprehensively. And then I will show detail examples about the profiling of macromolecular interactions including protein-protein interactions using proximity labeling and RNA-protein interactions, which were enabled by the developed sensitive proteomics platform. Lastly, the future direction toward next generation molecular interactomics including the direct identification of ligands bound to protein via mass spectrometry will be discussed.