What is Proteomics?
The Center
Rationale of the Proteome Center
Technology and Application Development
Post Doctoral Fellow Program
Definitions
Post Doctoral Fellow Program
The Proteome Center sponsors a unique post-doctoral training program that provides trainees with an unprecedented range of training. The fellows
participate in technology development or in demonstration projects in collaboration with researchers at the University of Michigan or the industrial sponsors.
The fellows participating in the demonstration projects (see below) particularly benefit from this program, as they work on a number of projects with
investigators while taking full advantage of the resources of the Center. They remain associated with the Center during their entire 2-year appointment
but work closely with a particular core of investigators only until the completion of the project, at which point they take on another demonstration project
and interact with a different group of investigators. The minimum time spent on a project is about 6 months and the average to be approximately a year.
This allow trainees sufficient time to not only solve a research problem, but to also become familiar with the research area. The specific demonstration
projects embarked on are selected to match and extend the fellows' previous experience. The post-doctoral training program is overseen by post-doctoral
advisory committee consisting of active researchers in several departments, including two members of the Center's Advisory committee.
This approach provides post-doctoral fellows with opportunities to apply their skills to a variety of problems while gaining a broad range of experience.
The emphasis on applying problem-solving skills to a number of projects is extremely useful in the rapidly-changing post-genome era. This type of training
prepares the post-doctoral fellows for academic as well as industrial research.
Publications that result from these collaborations include any post-doctoral fellows participating in the research and acknowledgements of the Center and
of the sponsoring organizations. The post-doctoral program is an essential component of the Center that encourages participation of investigators from
the University research community. It also helps ensure that the Center remains focused on solving real research problems of interest to both academic
and industrial investigators.
Demonstration Projects
The Center will carry out a number of demonstration projects with investigators in selected systems, including prokaryotes (E. coli
and selected pathogens), as well as archae and eukaryotes. These demonstration projects will be designed to identify all the components of the proteomes
for these organisms, providing the basis for functional studies. The demonstration projects will also address the identification of the functional components
of selected subcellular components. Methods will also be developed (and applied) for extending the compounds accessible to these technologies from
proteins to other biopolymers, including complex carbohydrates and RNA.
Some of the current demonstration projects include:
Instrument and Software Development
Development and/or modification of of new instruments and software for proteome studies are key components of the Proteome Center. The mass spectrometry
group focuses on instrumentation development and the bioinformatics group is involved with software development. Development efforts in both of these
categories is also pursued with the private sector.
A major effort of the BioInformatics group is developing software tools for accessing the huge amounts of data generated by the proteome studies as well as
for disseminating the data. With these developments we are able to provide database applications and visualization tools to other scientist via intranet or the Internet.
