• Question: What's the most typical type of protein you find when you break open cells?

    Asked by Emma to Christie on 17 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      This is an interesting question because we don’t actually know! In the 1970s they thought that EF-Tu (elongation factor thermo unstable), which is used in synthesising proteins, was the most abundant. When I look at proteins when I break open cells, I use antibodies to detect the levels of particular proteins (e.g. mitochondrial proteins). They are not necessarily the most abundant, it’s just what I want to look at. Antibodies are designed to recognise only one protein. If we tried to look at all of them it would be impossible – there are too many!

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