Overview
Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.
Engagement in physical activity is known to have wide ranging beneficial health effects, however, chronic over exertion can have detrimental effects on tissue structures within the body and can be best observed in the heavy industrial work place and sports settings. Our research team is interested in developing biomarkers which reflect both positive and negative impacts of physical activity / exertion on the human body to assist individuals to maintain levels of physical activity which promote and or maintain their health.
We have recently discovered that individuals who are exposed to elevated levels of physical exertion have increased levels of a specific protein in their urine. We are particularly interested in establishing label free quantitative mass spectrometry methods to evaluate the absolute levels of this and other specific target proteins in urine samples from people who engage in various forms of physical activity.
One such method is the utilisation of Quantitative Concatermer (Q-conCAT) technology. Basically, this involves production of stable isotope labelled proteins synthetic proteins which contain multiple 'proteotypic' peptides from the target proteins which we wish to quantitate by mass spectrometry. These artificial proteins can be added in known amounts to samples of interest where they act as standards in the mass spectrometer and thus enable accurate quantitation of the target proteins. Furthermore, because a single Q-conCAT protein effectively results in standards for multiple targets this enables the stoichiometric ratios between targets to be determined with great accuracy.
Methods and techniques that will be developed in the course of this project:
This project will adopt cutting edge: Molecular biology, protein engineering and protein expression, protein isolation, identification and quantitation techniques such as liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LCMS/MS), as well as more traditional protein biochemistry techniques such as SDS PAGE, immunological techniques and western blot analysis.
- Study level
- Honours
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Science and Engineering Faculty
- Research area
- Contact
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Please contact the supervisor.
Dr Tony Parker
