Martin Steffen, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dept of Genetics and Genomics
Dept of Biomedical Engineering

617-414-7935
E-637

steffen@bu.edu

Lab website:  http://steffen.bu.edu

My lab works on developing the tools of systems biology for mammalian cells. Currently we are emphasizing the technique of mass spectrometry. Using mass spec, one can currently identify a few thousand proteins in a single experiment, as well as many important post-translational modifications (PTMs).

Our guiding biological focus is cancer biology, and our interests are both at the level of basic research and clinical application. Specifically, we wish to characterize proteomic differences (identities, amounts, PTMs, splice forms) between normal and diseased tissue. We will also examine serum samples from donors with and without cancer as part of an effort to identify proteins that behave as early indicators of tumor development.

Our efforts in the area of technology development aim at identifying protein interactions using mass spectrometry. We are developing two methods: (1) for identifying strong, stable interactions in complexes, such as those that might be found in a ribosome, polymerase or other multi-subunit complex; (2) for identifying weak, transient interactions, such as those that are involved in signal transduction.

Our efforts in bioinformatics revolve around pathway and network identification. We have developed an algorithm for automated modeling of pathways in yeast, based only on two-hybrid protein interaction and microarray data. No prior knowledge of the pathway is needed. We now wish to extend this method to C. elegans and drosophila, and will explore application of this algorithm to mouse and human. Other computational efforts involve integrating known pathway and network data with proteomic and microarray experiments.