| Swiss
Group for Mass Spectrometry Schweizerische Gruppe für Massenspektrometrie |
|
Groupe
suisse de spectrométrie de masse Gruppo svizzero di spettrometria di massa |
| The 28th meeting
of the SGMS will be held at the Dorint Resort Blüemlisalp Beatenberg, November 4-5, 2010, high above Lake Thun in the Bernese Oberland, with a scenic view of the Swiss Alps! |
| travel by car
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| travel
by train train station |
train leaves (as of May 27, 2009) | |
| Geneva: | IC 717at 07:45, track 4 |
|
| Basel: | Cisalpino at 08:28, track 11 arrives in Bern at 09:27, track 3 stay in the train until Thun |
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| Zürich: | IC712 at 08:32,
track 17 Bern at 09:29, track 4 then see Bern below |
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| Bern: | Cisalpino at
09:35, track 3 take Bus 21050 at 10:02 take cable car to Beatenberg
at 10:44 it's a 5 minutes walk to the Hotel Dorint from there! |
The registration form is available
as word (HERE) or PDF file (HERE).
Please send your registration to sgms@brechbuehler.ch
not later than October 1, 2010.
There is absolutely no need to register personally at the Dorint Hotel Blüemlisalp,
Beatenberg! The SGMS committee will manage all hotel reservations and payments.
We will strictly follow a first come first serve policy for the hotel room assignment.
See the registration form for prices.
There will be an additional fee of 50 CHF for late registration (after September
1, 2010).
Next to the plenary lectures there will be time for several oral presentations from various participants. The time allotted will be 20 minutes. The deadline for abstract submission is August 6, 2010. Please submit your abstract including author's name and address directly to the president of the SGMS, Marc Suter (marc.suter@eawag.ch). The abstract should not exceed 2500 characters.
Guidelines for the submission of abstracts:
Plenary Lectures |
|
Mass Spectrometry-based Methodologies for Investigations of N- and O-linked Glycans and Their Effects on Assembly and Interactions of Cells and Organisms |
|
Catherine
E Costello |
|
| The glycosylation status of cell surface proteins
and lipids influences interactions of individual cells and even whole organisms,
with one another and with the environment. For example, epithelial cellular
adhesion via adherens junctions is mediated by multi-protein complexes.
Similarly, cell-surface carbohydrates provide critical signals that govern
expansion of tumors and activation of growth factors. Assembly of multimers
of P0 protein, a major component in myelin is dependent on its glycosylation.
Furthermore, changes in cell surface glycosylation, either species-specific
or due to genetic mutations, cause changes in each system’s susceptibility
to microbial infection. We are developing new and improved methods, centered
on MS, for detailed structural determinations of glycans and glycoconjugates
present as components of these complex mixtures. We are investigating new
methods for glycan structural determinations and are utilizing glycomics
and proteomics-based approaches to define glycan-dependent interactions
and to correlate changes in the phenotypes of individual cells and whole
organisms with degrees of glycosylation and differences in glycans.
Acknowledgements: NIH National Center for Research Resources and National
Heart Lung and Blood Institute. |
|
Orchids: models of biological complexity |
|
| Jyotsna
Sharma |
|
| Orchidaceae is one of the largest and most highly
evolved plant families. Although approximately 70% of the orchid species
are of tropical origins ranging in size from a few centimeters to several
meters, the rest are native to the temperate and even arctic regions of
the planet inhabiting most all natural ecosystems except for the driest
deserts. A majority of the tropical and subtropical orchids grow as epiphytes,
i.e., growing on top of other plants, whereas those in the temperate regions
tend to grow terrestrially and include several non-photosynthetic species.
There is at least one known subterranean orchid species. This wide diversity
and evolutionary success of orchids is a result of an array of very complex,
and often very specific, biological and ecological strategies employed by
these organisms. Their highly specialized floral and vegetative structures,
pollination mechanisms involving sophisticated chemistry, cryptic growth
habits, root morphology, and unique reliance on mycorrhizal fungi are just
some of the characteristics that make them outstanding, although challenging,
models for studying complex biological interactions and even motivated Darwin
to exclusively study their biology. Orchids continue to intrigue commercial
and biological explorers alike.
One of the highly distinctive features of orchids is their specialized interaction with mycorrhizal fungi. These interactions can range from complete dependence on fungi throughout the life of an orchid to heavy reliance only during certain life-stages or very little reliance on fungi beyond the fully heterotrophic, seed germination stage. Orchid fungus interactions also can either be highly specific or relatively general. Given that up to 30,000 species are estimated to belong to the Orchidaceae, a number of ecological strategies appear to exist among orchid mycorrhizae. However, all orchid fungi identified this far fall into select fungal taxonomic groups only. This presentation will highlight some examples of the intricate orchid-fungal interactions and their consequences for biodiversity. We seek to understand whether fungal distribution determines orchid distribution in natural habitats, and whether the associations of orchids and their fungi are specific or general. Overall, orchid mycorrhizae are relatively underexplored, and there is especially a need to understand their distribution, inter-dependence, and communication mechanisms. |
|
Shotgun lipidomics for cell biology and molecular medicine |
|
Andrej
Shevchenko |
|
Lipidomics, an emerging branch of the omics sciences, aims at cataloguing and quantifying the total lipid complement synthesized by a cell, tissue or organism. Shotgun analysis of the lipidome implies that total lipid extracts containing hundreds of molecules from different lipid classes, are directly infused into a tandem mass spectrometer and thousands of MS and MS/MS spectra are acquired in a single run. Individual molecular species are recognized and quantified using their accurately determined masses and characteristic structural fragments. Shotgun lipidomics approach is appealing: it is rapid, comprehensive
and easy to set up at any tandem mass spectrometer. Quantification of
lipid species does not involve time-integration because the same analyte
is infused into a mass spectrometer. There is ample time to achieve good
ion statistics even for minor peaks and the ionization conditions can
be tuned to enhance the sensitivity towards barely detectable lipid classes.
There is no carry-over between samples and the entire process can be completely
automated. Shotgun lipidomics set up at the same instrumentation platform
supports both high- throughput clinical screens and targeted characterization
of molecular lipid species from a variety of model organisms from bacteria
to humans. However, two major bottlenecks of the shotgun approach are
in the limited dynamic range and possible ionization suppression of certain
species and in the consistent interpretation of exceedingly complex spectra
datasets. We argue that high resolution tandem mass spectrometers together
with the dedicated data interpretation software could overcome these hurdles
and support a broad scope of research efforts in cell biology, molecular
medicine and nutrition science. |
|
Capillary electrophoresis and ultra high pressure liquid chromatography hyphenated with MS in pharmaceutical analysis |
|
| Jean-Luc
Veuthey |
|
| In the last ten years, a strong development has emerged in Capillary electrophoresis (CE) and in Liquid Chromatography (LC) to achieve fast, ultra-fast and highly efficient separations in the pharmaceutical field. In the same period of time, Mass Spectrometry (MS) with different analyzers became the best complementary tool to separation techniques, to further gain selectivity and/or sensitivity, when dealing with complex matrices (e.g. biological fluids and plant extracts). The use of large bio-molecules is increasing in pharmacy. Therefore, there is a need for efficient analytical techniques for determining these compounds (e.g. proteins). The on-line combination of capillary electrophoresis (CE) with mass spectrometry (MS) is an attractive option for intact protein analysis (i.e., no digestion, no derivatization). On the one hand, CE presents features such as high speed, great efficiency, and low solvent and sample consumptions. Moreover, CE allows working under aqueous conditions and without stationary phase. On the other hand, MS provides selectivity and ability to identification. TOF (time-of-flight) analyzer is particularly well suited to protein analysis, due to high mass range and mass accuracy. For small charged molecules, CE-MS with a simple quadrupole is also a powerful orthogonal analytical tool to LC-MS. Different examples will be given to illustrate the potential of CE-MS in the pharmaceutical domain. In LC, various analytical strategies have been reported for enhancing the chromatographic performance, such as the use of monolithic supports, high temperature, fused-core particles and sub-2µm particles working under very high pressure (UHPLC). Among the proposed approaches, it has been demonstrated that UHPLC and fused-core particles presented several advantages for the analysis of small molecules as well as large bio-molecules. Therefore, UHPLC-MS with different analyzers can be used to analyze very complex matrices with compounds present at low concentration. The possibilities offered by UHPLC at high temperature (i.e. HT-UHPLC) to further enhance chromatographic performance will be also discussed. Finally, UHPLC-MS/MS and UHPLC-TOF-MS can be attractive in ADME studies at an early stage of the drug discovery process. |
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