So....ummm...this is a thing....
...a gross thing....
I know a lot of people who worry about stuff like "post-mortem degradation" which is where you might not want to do proteomics on someone who has been dead and puppeted around for a month in the hot sun.
However - and this is where it gets weird - sometimes the most fragile and easy to homogenize part of the body (the brain) ends up around IN ANCIENT BODIES. What? Gross? YES!
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to eat after this. Maybe I'll stop.
Meh. According to these people over 4,000 ANCIENT BRAINS have been recovered from the past. Some as old as 12,000 years??? Which sounds impossible. My postdoc advisor would time me getting brains out of mice because she was sure we wouldn't care about the proteins in the cells in the subventricular thingamabob if we didn't do it fast.
It turns out that if you have the right conditions the brain doesn't just break down. Why? When? Proteomics and a very icky experimental design to the rescue!
I can't spend a lot more time on this, but you should check it out. There is some DDA proteomics and some DIA and two different instruments AND there are proteins that last a LONG TIME and these authors work out the biochemical reasons for it! Super cool stuff.
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