Combined Mass Spectrometric and Optical Spectroscopic Investigation of Biological Molecules in Controlled Micro-environments

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The development and application of new tools and techniques to identify molecules and study their properties can be transformative, with long-term impact on fields ranging from chemistry and physics to medicine and biology. The development of such tools is the aim of research in the Jockusch laboratory. In particular, we focus on the development of new techniques that extend the uses of mass spectrometry (MS) in order to enhance the understanding of how biological molecules such as proteins are affected by their environment. This is important because proteins play a central role in biology. For example, proteins that are ‘misfolded’ have negative impacts on health, and are associated with many devastating diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. However, proteins and other biomolecules do not generally act in isolation; their behavior is modulated by a complex web of molecular interactions. In order to dissect the complexity present in Nature, it is valuable to study simplified systems whose complexity can gradually be built up in a carefully controlled fashion. Thus, the Jockusch laboratory’s approach to understanding the properties of biomolecules is to study them in a highly-controlled environment: isolated inside a mass spectrometer. This enables the separation of intrinsic molecular properties from effects of the molecular environment. In subsequent investigations, pieces of the molecular environment such as water molecules, metal ion, or other binding partners will be added to form complexes and clusters, thus enabling discovery of how additional specific interactions modulate or control the molecular properties of interest.