Applying novel proteomics technologies to study phospho-signalling

• PhD and Graduate Research Masters
• Honours

Protein phosphorylation is a crucial mechanism of cell signalling and mass spectrometry-based proteomics is the ideal technology for profiling these changes. Identifying, quantifying, and localising phospho-sites is key to understanding these networks, however, practical challenges remain. Firstly, phosphoproteomics relies on enriching lowly-abundant phosphopeptides from abundant unmodified peptide background. Secondly, the mass spectrometry methods dramatically alter complexity, reproducibility and completeness of phosphopeptide data. As such, there remains a large optimisable space across phosphoproteomic workflows.

WEHI Proteomics and phosphoproteomic specialists in the Tanzer Lab will guide students to optimise phosphoproteomic workflows. The Tanzer lab will lead students in learning advanced cell-culture models to measure workflow improvements. Opportunities exist to learn advanced phosphoproteomics workflows within the context of phagocytosis and macrophage biology.

WEHI Proteomics is a state of the art facility implementing the latest mass spectrometry innovations at the interface between basic and clinical research. We are fully equipped in-house across all aspects of proteomics, including reagents for preparation of diverse samples (recombinant proteins, lysates, plasma, tissues etc.), six mass spectrometry instruments, and infrastructure for database searching and statistical analysis.

Our student research projects are targeted towards transformative proteomic workflows and/or mass spectrometry methods. Students will be assigned research projects with practical outcomes (i.e. new methods), but will be also embedded within a specific biological discipline driven by a named collaborator (i.e. clinical cohorts, animal model, signalling pathway). The student’s research will underpin facility innovation, with access to the full complement of WEHI Proteomics expertise, resources, and network.