Protective effect of phosphorylated Hsp27 in coronary arteries through actin stabilization.

There is evidence for an inverse association between cellular expression of Hsp27 and vascular disease with carotid plaques, endarterectomy specimens, and cardiac biopsies investigated to date. Here we compare non-diseased coronary arteries from human heart transplant donors and patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) with no evidence of coronary artery disease, to coronary arteries from patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) in order to determine abundance of phosphorylated Hsp27 (phospho-Hsp27) in plaque-free diseased vessels and elucidate how this protective effect is brought about through protein regulation. Western blotting identified phospho-Hsp27, phosphorylated on Ser82, Ser78, and Ser15, to be specifically decreased in IHD, but not DCM, compared to non-diseased vessels.

Assessing the use of thermal treatment to preserve the intact proteomes of post-mortem heart and brain tissue.

Protein degradation that occurs in tissue during post-mortem interval or sample preparation is problematic in quantitative analyses as confounding variables may arise. Ideally, such artefacts should be prevented by preserving the native proteome during sample preparation. We assessed the efficacy of thermal treatment (TT) to preserve the intact proteome of mouse heart and brain tissue in comparison to standard snap-freezing with liquid nitrogen (LN).

5th BSPR-EBI meeting, proteomics: from Technology to New Biology 8-10 July 2008, Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK.

This paper reports on the 5(th) joint British Society for Proteome Research (BSPR) and European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) meeting which took place at the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, Cambridge, UK, from the 8(th) to 10(th) July, 2008. As in previous years, the meeting attracted leading experts in the field who presented the latest cutting edge in proteomics. The meeting was entitled "Proteomics: From Technology to New Biology" taking into account the major transition proteomics has undergone in the past few years.