Duke University - Proteomics Core

The School of Medicine, the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, and the Duke Cancer Institute have collaboratively created a Proteomics Core Facility to provide protein characterization resources for the Duke Research Community. These services include protein identification and protein quantitation from a wide variety of sample types from simple mixtures (gel spots and bands) to complex mixtures (protein complexes, cell lysates, and plasma). The facility is located in room B02 (basement) of the Levine Science Research Center.
The Duke Proteomics Core Facility uses mass spectrometry as the key technology for the qualitative and quantitative characterization of proteins. Our principal approach for the analysis of proteins is 'bottom-up' proteomics, where all proteins are proteolytically digested, producing peptide surrogates (signature peptides) of the original proteins.

Protein identifications are made using state-of-the-art database search engines running on a dedicated high speed Blade cluster, with the capability of searching standard or custom protein databases.

Protein quantitation can be accomplished using a 'gel free, label-free' technology which provides both relative quantitation (test vs. control) and absolute quantitation (nanograms protein). Alternatively, isotope-coded (labeled) samples can be analyzed to provide relative quantitation information.