Doctoral Candidate Technical University of Munich Zolling, Bayern, Germany
Body of Abstract: Plants represent the nutritional basis of effectively all life on earth; increasing demands for protein-rich plant-based alternatives must be met to sustain the growing population while counteracting climate change. Despite the progressive elucidation of crop genomes, less remains known concerning crop proteomes, the entirety of proteins responsible for the execution and regulation of critical life functions. To mitigate this knowledge gap, we have assembled a large international group of partners to launch a new socio-economically relevant initiative; the core comprising the doctoral program “The Proteomes that Feed the World”, both conceived and launched at TUM, and funded by the Elite Network of Bavaria. The program’s principal aim is to map proteomes of major tissues from 100 of the world’s most critical crop species for human nutrition, thus generating a Crop Proteome Atlas with significant academic value and contributions to agricultural, food, and pharmaceutical industries.
To support a plant proteomics project of this scale, the international doctoral program assembles an interdisciplinary team of 16 PhD students and 12 principal investigators (PIs) with leading expertise in plant science, proteomics, and bioinformatics to form the Crop Proteome Engine, complemented by an international network of more than 30 contributing partners. The Crop Proteome Engine targets optimized consistency by combining a serial three-step protein extraction protocol, an automated SP3 protocol on a Bravo liquid-handling platform, and micro-LC-MS/MS conditions that enable the identification and quantification of >10,000 proteins from plant tissue within 6 hours of instrument operation. Resulting raw mass spectrometric data, protein identification and quantification from MaxQuant and Prosit rescoring will be made publicly available on PRIDE and in ProteomicsDB on a regular basis throughout the project. The Proteome Engine still actively seeks initiative partners interested in contributing plant material and innovative bioinformatics support.