ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Oxygen, although essential for human life, can turn into an aggressive chemical that is outright toxic to important molecules inside our cells. This “oxidative stress” is associated with many diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease and cancer, and has been suggested to be the culprit underlying aging. In an article published online Feb. 14 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), University of Michigan researchers led by associate professor Ursula Jakob report on a new method that allows them to observe how oxidative stress affects the major building blocks of a cell, the proteins. The new technique, called OxICAT, makes it possible to quantify the oxidation state of thousands of different proteins in a single experiment.
