NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Invitrogen and the Human Proteome Organization have wrapped up an effort to create a protein standard sampling program, the company said today.
The resulting HUPO Gold MS Protein Standard is a fixed mixture of known human proteins designed to allow scientists to benchmark and compare data between experiments, Invitrogen said.
Paul Predki, Invitrogen’s vice president of R&D, said the standard will help scientists make “their substrate identification more definitive and will allow them to reference their efforts on a global research scale."
The standard is designed to enable scientists to “validate and cross-reference their data, independent of sample types processed, mass spectrometry workflows performed, or actual mass spectrometers used,” Invitrogen said.
Predki added that currently available mass spec standards “potentially contain naturally occurring contaminants, as well as proteins subject to natural genetic variations … which can contribute to reduced reliability and reproducibility of a standard.”
The product, which is available to HUPO members now, will be the first commercially available all-recombinant human protein standard for mass spectrometry when it widely launches in the first quarter of 2008, according to Invitrogen.