Beschreibung der Lehr- und Lernformen
Topic study (digital, week 1):
At the beginning of the course, an introduction lecture will be given (in presence, digital) providing an overview of structural proteomics before students start their focused study. Students will then focus on the three key techniques of structural proteomics (TPP, Lip-MS, CLMS). A key Literature with six related questions will be provided for each topic. Students will learn about the topics on their own and answer the questions in writing. The answers to the questions need to be submitted by the end of the week. Additional literature and learning materials will be offered to help understanding the topics.
Topic discussion (digital, week 2):
From week 2, the course will be taught fully in presence, both digital and in person.
Students will improve their understanding of the three key structural proteomics techniques through discussions led by a senior researcher in the field. Then the students will be distributed randomly into six teams, keeping internationalisation, diversity and gender balanced as much as possible.
Each team will prepare for every key literature a 10-min seminar, in which they cover one of six aspects of the topic. The slides will be prepared collectively within each team for all three topics, while each team member will present one of the three topics orally to the course and a field expert. International experts will join the topic discussions.
The course is highly interactive. In addition to topic discussion, PhD students from the department of Bioanalytics will present their ongoing projects in structural proteomics and answer research and career related questions.
Practical section (in person+digital, weeks 3-5)
In the practical section, the student teams from week 2 will combine affinity purification, shotgun proteomics and crosslinking mass spectrometry to isolate and characterise human 26S proteasomes in solution.
Week 3 will be wet-lab work (in person). For each day’s task, in advance (via ISIS), students will receive protocols and instruction videos, with associated questions about key steps. Students will discuss the experimental procedures and the experimental setup together with the instructors before operations in the lab. The research project style requires instant analysis and discussions on experimental results such as SDS-PAGE and protein concentration assays. Decision-making by students will be required for proceeding to subsequent experimental steps. Towards the end of the week, students will acquire mass spectrometry data on the in-course samples.
Week 4 will be data analysis (digital). Students will learn about the principles behind protein identification and identification of crosslinks through a series of short seminars. They will be guided to analysing their mass spectrometry data using a leading proteomics software, MaxQuant, and crosslink-specific tools, xiSEARCH & xiVIEW. They will also retrieve structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and interrogate crosslinks in the context of these structural models.
In week 5, all students will design and prepare a mutual presentation on their in-course work. This project presentation will be divided into six aspects of the work each being prepared and presented in a 20-minute talk by one of the six teams. The preparation of the presentation will be online, assisted by the instructors. On the last day, teams will gather and present the project in person.
