Dr. Pavel Kielkowski

Project title: Determination of mass spectrometric properties of tubulin modified C-terminal peptides.

Project description: The aim of the project is detail characterization of mass spectrometric properties of tubulin C-terminal peptides. Alpha- and beta-tubulins are main components of microtubules, the main building block of the cytoskeleton. The C-terminus of the tubulins is modified by multiple post-translational modifications, which are collectively called a ‘tubulin code’. The tubulin modifications malfunction has been associated with numerous neurodegenerative diseases, as the microtubule dynamics and the modifications are critical for proper function of neurons. The mass spectrometry-based proteomics is a direct and highly suitable method to identify these modified peptides from complex tissue or cell culture-derived samples. However, this is not yet possible in the desired throughput, because the mass spectrometric properties and fragmentation patterns of the C-terminal peptides are not characterized. The project would therefore include the synthesis of modified peptides mimicking the tubulins C-terminus and characterization of their mass spectrometric properties. Finally, these results are to be applied for identification of the modified tubulin peptides extracted from the neuronal cell lysates.

Project supervisor: Andreas Wiest

Required lab skills:

• Peptide synthesis and purification (must-have)
• Analytical techniques – High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Mass Spectrometry (MS) (nice-to-have)
• Bioinformatics (nice-to-have)