The instrument makes use of a new method to remove and isolate the tangle of proteins found within cells, a process necessary to reveal protein function within an organism. In contrast to other, more labor-intensive separation methods, the Purdue team's technique allows proteins with similar chemical properties to be separated in the gas phase based on their mass so that analysis can be accomplished in far fewer steps than previously required.
'This technique, when fully developed, will allow us to take hundreds of proteins from a cell without damaging them,' said R. Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue's
