Goodlett lab mourns loss of Sid Nelson

Friday night 9 December our friend and mentor Sid Nelson passed away suddenly at home. Sid was one of the nicest people I knew in academics or otherwise. He was directly responsible for recruiting me from the ISB to the UW eight years ago and thus the formation of our lab. Beyond his cordial, polite nature he was extremely helpful to anyone who had a problem to solve and no matter the topic he would take the time to meet you. In our case, he was also responsible for our success in protein chemical crosslink analysis as it was Sid who brought us the first problem to solve. As Dean he was responsible for soliciting the funds to support informatics in the School of Pharmacy MS facility, which by the way are the only recurring funds ever to come from the central administration to support the facility. These funds have been the glue that tied the lab together year after year supporting a half-dozen different programmers. Everyone who has passed through our lab owes a great debt of gratitude to Sid because of his support to get our lab started on a solid foundation and for nurturing us along the way.

Dave's family safe in Alabama

A number of folk have asked about Dave's family back in Alabama. While the storms came close to both his sister's place near Montgomery and his parents' farm near Huntsville, neither sustained serious damage. The farm is without power due to the shutdown of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant on the Tennessee River, which lost transmission lines in the storms. So the worst that has happened to them is an inconvenience of being without power and the loss of two freezers' worth of vegetables. That, though, is insignificant in comparison to the loss of life and property in places like the little town of Phil Campbell near to them which was obliterated from the map.

Scott Heron to give oral presentation at ASMS Conference

Scott Heron's abstract submission to the 59th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics has been accepted as an oral presentation in the "Instrumentation: New Developments in Ionization" session. The abstract is titled "Improved performance of Surface Acoustic Wave Ionization (SAWN) using an additional voltage: potentials and drawbacks." Co-authors with Scott are Christophe Masselon, Yue Huang, Scott Edgar, Sung Hwan Yoon, and Dave Goodlett. The presentation will detail recent work investigating ionization efficiency and oxidation processes associated with SAWN in the presence and absence of external voltages.

Goodlett Lab sends nine posters to upcoming ASMS meeting

The following abstracts have been accepted as posters for the 59th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics to be held June 5-9, 2011, in Denver, CO:

• Chapman et al. "A novel proteomics approach to quantitative direct sample infusion: rapid protein identification and quantification using data-independent acquisition"
• Huang et al. "Comparison of internal energy deposition with Surface Acoustic Wave Nebulization (SAWN) and Electospray Ionization"
• Jung et al. "Derivation of five essential factors to predict peptide tandem mass spectrometric detectability"
• Monkkonen et al. "Tandem MS analysis of peptides proteolyzed on and nebulized from a surface acoustic wave chip"
• Nguyen et al. "Top-down Precursor Acquisition Independent From Ion Count (PAcIFIC)"
• Singh et al. "Mass spectrometric strategies for improved identification of cross-linked peptides"
• Ting et al. "Cross correlation score aids objective Lipid A structure assignment"
• To et al. "Profiling of bioactive chocolate extracts by high resolution mass spectrometry"
• Yoon et al. "Structural analysis of Lipid A using Surface Acoustic Wave Nebulization"

Pragya Singh defends doctoral dissertation

Pragya Singh, a member of the Goodlett lab, defended her doctoral dissertation "Structural and Functional Characterization of Bacterial Secretion Systems Using Mass Spectrometry". Dr. Singh was a student in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, advised by Dave Goodlett. Congratulations, Pragya!

Sunhee Jung defends doctoral dissertation

Sunhee Jung, a member of the Goodlett Lab and the Aitchison Lab, defended her doctoral dissertation "From protein redistribution to proteotypic peptides: Application and developments of mass spectrometry". Dr. Jung was a student in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program. Congratulations, Sunhee!

SAWN in action

Check out a video of Surface Acoustice Wave Nebulization, in which a 2-microliter droplet is nebulized by surface acoustic waves generated from a piezoelectric lithium niobate surface (provided courtesy of the Cooper Group, University of Glasgow). The droplets are drawn into the transfer capillary of a Thermo LTQ-FTICR mass spectrometer for analysis.



The UW has filed a patent on the use of surface acoustic wave nebulization (SAWN) as a means to introduce nonvolatile samples into a mass spectrometer from a flat surface at atmospheric pressure. The associated publication is Heron SR, et al., "Surface Acoustic Wave Nebulization of Peptides as Microfluidic Interface for Mass Spectrometry." Anal Chem. 82(10):3985-3989 (2010).

The SAWN method provides a new way to introduce nonvolatile samples into a mass spectrometer without the need for capillaries or any nozzle as is needed by electrospray ionization, while maintaining the benefits of multiple charging.  These features will accelerate lipid structure analysis carried out by the lab.