Story ideas from Molecular & Cellular ...(the role of the other proteins may show ...)

The scientists also found that 17 percent of the identified proteins are also present in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) a watery fluid that surrounds and protects the brain and spinal cord. Since proteins in the CSF are more accessible clinically than those in the cortex, understanding how proteins present in both the frontal cortex and CSF are involved in neurodegenerative diseases could help improve their diagnosis and assess disease progression.

Taken together, the proteins identified in this study provide important information to ultimately understand how the frontal cortex works and what goes wrong in many neurodegenerative diseases, the researchers conclude. Zhang and his team are now trying to determine the most comprehensive list of all the proteins that are working in other brain regions, such as the middle brain, which is heavily involved in movement disorders such as Parkinsons disease.

Article: Proteomics Identification of Proteins in Human Cortex Using Multidimensional Separations and MALDI Tandem Mass Spectrometer, by Sheng Pan, Min Shi, Jinghua Jin, Roger L. Albin, Andy Lieberman, Marla Gearing, Biaoyang Lin, Catherine Pan, Xiaowei Yan, Daniel T. Kashima, and Jing Zhang

MEDIA CONTACT: Jing Zhang, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington; tel: 206-341-5245; e-mail: zhangj@u.washington.edu

Researchers have developed a new way of detecting the abnormal presence of complexes of sugars and proteins in the blood of cancer patients, thus providing a new tool for cancer diagnosis.

Many proteins on the surface of cells have sugars attached to them, which helps the cells bind with one another and communicate among one another. But in cancer, these cell surface proteins can have an abnormally
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