Dr. Abdulkerim Eroglu and Dr. Nathan Crook awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) competitive grant

Dr. Abdulkerim Eroglu (Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry) and Dr. Nathan Crook (Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) at NC State – long-time proteomics collaborators of METRIC scientists Dr. Taufika Islam Williams and Mr. Leonard B. Collins – have been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) competitive grant for the fiscal year 2023 for their proposal entitled “Engineering probiotic yeast to release intracellular molecules into the mammalian gut.” Dr. Eroglu recently partnered with Dr. Islam Williams and Mr. Collins to develop tandem mass tag (TMT) – based bottom-up quantification methods for protein interrogation in colonic epithelial cells and mice colon tissue samples under differential carotenoid treatments. These proteomics workflows will be applied in the study objective described for this proposal, namely to engineer yeast for the release of β-carotene in the gut and verify this β-carotene release by identifying and quantifying functional biomarkers of β-carotene using mass spectrometry-based discovery proteomics. The experimental design will employ METRIC’s newly acquired state-of-the-art proteomics platform for data acquisition: a Thermo Scientific Vanquish NEO interfaced with a Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Eclipse. Thermo Scientific Proteome Discoverer 2.5 software will be applied for data workup. This award is jointly funded by NSF’s BIO-MCB-Systems and Synthetic Biology cluster and ENG-CBET-Cellular and Biochemical Engineering program.