Serum Protein Profiling
Contents
Serum Protein Profiling
Basic Characteristics
- Description
Protein Profiling has been used in the past to find biomarkers for both non-psychiatric and psychiatric disorders. Some argue that studying proteins is more informative for finding the underlying pathophysiology of a disorder.
Proteomic tools can be used to find quantitative and qualitative protein patterns in many different tissues, which can be useful for finding specific diagnostic criteria or biomarkers. They can be used to identify differentially expressed genes, or analyzed for whole protein patterns.1
- Serum Protein Profiling and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Established biomarkers could lead to earlier and more reliable diagnosis of ASD. Altered blood levels of neurotrophic factors have been reported, as well as associations of cytokines and chemokines with ASD. Using MALDI-ToF-MS with fractionation using C8-magnetic beads, one group was able to find three peaks in the spectrum which were significantly different between the ASD and control groups. M/Z ratios of approximately 4.40, and 5.15 kDa were present in the spectra of the control samples, but not the ASD samples while a protein corresponding to an M/Z value of 10.38 kDa was present in the ASD group, but not in the controls. This group did not characterize these proteins. 1
- Methods
There are different methods of analyzing proteins, depending on the purpose.
Concerns
References
1. Taurines R. et. al. Serum protein profiling and proteomics in autistic spectrum disorder using magnetic bead-assisted mass spectrometry.Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2010 Apr;260(3):249-55 PMID 19784855
