EuPA School on Practical Proteomics 2018 Day 1 Recap!!

There is no way I'm going to do this amazing meeting justice, but I'm going to try. You might not believe me, but I learned more at this small meeting in Vienna than I did at ASMS 2018. Karl Mechtler and his team invited an amazing group of speakers doing the coolest stuff that anyone is doing in proteomics right now and -- after being amazed by their work -- I could just bug them during lunch and at dinner (and maybe after).  I'll be writing lots about the stuff I saw here as this stuff is gets accepted.

Day 1!! TMT day!! (Late recap!)

How does the highest throughput proteomics lab in the world do what they do?

Who am I talking about? The Haas lab at MGH. I've been in a lot of mass spec labs. I work in a really big one that runs more samples per month than I'd ever believe possible -- Haas lab is tearing through more proteomes than anything I've ever seen. We got a morning of logic into using TMT SPS MS3 to get near complete proteome coverage on 10 human cell lines every 24 hours or so.  In the afternoon we tore through the practical day-to-day operations and challenges of trying to complete thousands of proteomes per year. This lab is linked to a lot of papers -- and with this kind of throughput -- we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Christian Huber was the one break from this intensive TMT crash course. Dr. Huber delivered the best separations chemistry course I've ever seen. I suspect he might teach this at his University. You can check out his site here.  If you know anyone in the small molecule world you're probably aware of how primitive mass spec separation technology is for proteomics.

It was still a wake up call when Dr. Huber called out some of the more seasoned people in the room and asked them if they remembered PepMap....which...I...umm....totally still use.....and some people I respect A LOT are in the room chuckling because they consider it an artifact of history....this leaves me wondering....

 ....use denial when you can...it makes you feel better than thinking you're wasting loads of peptides with lousy chromatography.....

Day 1 needed to end a little short since I'm presenting data on day 2 that is currently being processed....fingers crossed!