Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have developed a new method for identifying specific proteins in whole cell extracts of microorganisms using traditional peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF). The key to the new method, according to the researchers, is a “shortcut” for preparing samples that makes PMF faster and more economical. By reducing the cost of protein identification, they believe PMF can become an economical tool for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of microorganisms used in environmental cleanup. The researchers used a dioxin-eating organism to demonstrate the capabilities of their methodology, which they described in an article published in the May 2005 edition of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
