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Oceans of Protein

June 9, 2013

WHOI marine chemist Mak Saito has adapted an approach used in biomedical research to study marine organisms: proteomics. He has developed new techniques to detect and measure the proteins that marine organisms make and use to function in their environment and respond to changing conditions—particularly metalloproteins, which contain iron, zinc, cobalt, and other elements. Recently, he collaborated with biomedical researchers to explore proteins in a terrestrial organism, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, which requires unusually high levels of manganese, but unlike any other known organisms, can live without iron.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)