TV series on RTL4
The six-part TV series Lang Zullen We Leven started on Sunday, 4 September 2011. In this popular science series about DNA and proteins, presenter Geert Hoes will be demonstrating in a playful and accessible way what’s possible now in this field, and what might be possible in future. Episode 4 is about proteomics and was made in close cooperation with the Netherlands Proteomics Centre (NPC).
Proteomics has many applications and plays a key role in all life and, consequently, in sickness and in health. In an engaging way, scientific director of the NPC Professor Albert Heck shows us how heredity works, how it is that each person is unique, and what part proteins play in this. He explains what stem cells are, and why one cell turns into a lung cell and the other into a heart cell. Footage from Science Center NEMO focuses on the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly through the interaction of genes and proteins.
From
bowling alley to mass spectrometer…
There are hundreds of thousands of different types of proteins and each plays a specific role. If you want to understand how cells and organisms work, you have to identify the proteins. Researcher Reinout Raijmakers shows Geert Hoes in the NPC laboratory that this is done using a mass spectrometer, and also, of course, how this is actually done. Hereto, they set up a bowling alley in the lab corridor. In a test, which is performed live, Reinout demonstrates what proteins Geert has in his blood at that particular moment. This test is a good way of explaining why a proteome is constantly changing.
… and
from blue-green algae to the biological clock
At the end of
this episode, Geert Hoes talks to researcher Esther van Duijn about the
relationship between DNA and the biological clock, which is something shared by
humans, animals and plants alike. Esther explains that every cell in a body has
its own clock, which is controlled by a single specific area in the brain. She
also discusses the research into blue-green algae done by the NPC. In the
future, this could help people with serious sleep problems, caused by a fault in
their biological clock.
‘Lang Zullen We Leven’ is an initiative of the
Netherlands Genomics Initiative. The episode on proteomics was made possible
with the support of the Netherlands Proteomics Centre, Utrecht University,
Thermo Scientific, MS Vision and Agilent Technologies.