Proteomics: immune proteins

Introduction

Milk is the most important food for the growth and development of the neonate because of its unique nutrient composition combined with the presence of many bioactive proteins. One of the most interesting components, the immune proteins, plays a pivotal role in protecting the gut mucosa against pathogens and achieving many beneficial outcomes for the immunity status of the neonate. In addition, the immune proteins are also known to play an important role in protection of the mammary gland. Some, mainly qualitative, studies have already been done to describe the immune proteins in both human and bovine milk, but the knowledge on dynamics of the immune proteins is still very limited.

Aim

Studying the extent and causes of variation in immune proteins using an advanced proteomics approach.

Research

The extent and causes of variation in the immune proteome have not been studied comprehensively. To better understand this variation, the following research questions will be answered within this project:
- What is the profile of the immune protein of human and bovine milk over lactation?
- What is the effect of mammary gland inflammation on immune proteins in bovine milk?
- What is the difference in immune proteome among individual cows and individual human?

- What is the difference in immune proteome between species (human and cow)?

Methods

Filter aided sample preparation (FASP), dimethyl labeling (DML), followed by LC-MS/MS will be used for separation of low abundance proteins from milk. Different data analyses approached will be used to analyse the resulting data.