Developing proteomics and metaproteomics as tools for increased oil recovery - Annual report VISTA 2009

Object

The project is divided in 3 work packages (WP1, WP2 and WP3). In short, the post.doc. project aims to perform proteomic and metaproteomic mapping of oil reservoirs, marine sediments and lab-scale bioconversion experiments with viscous (“heavy”) crude oils. The work will be carried out mainly at StatoilHydro’s Research Center in Trondheim under the supervision of Prof. Svein Valla (NTNU’s Dep. of Biotechnology), Prof. Finn Drabløs (FUGE Service Platform for Bioinformatics and NTNU’s Dep. of Medicine) and Dr. Christian Collin-Hansen (StatoilHydro’s Dep. of Energy and Environment). Kjetill S. Jakobsen’s group at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) at UiO will be collaborators with main focus on the genomic part of the project. Together these two projects will add significant momentum towards the goal of strengthening the national competence within the fields of metaproteomics and metagenomics, specifically directed at functional studies on microorganisms inhabiting oil and gas reservoirs. 

Status:

Since last report three additional growth experiments have been conducted. The samples have so far been used to optimise the extraction protocol for 2D-gel electrophoresis. A reproducible and robust protocol has been established for extraction of proteins from the water phase. As a result, good images from 2D separation of proteins from the water phase have been obtained. Proteins extracted from the oil phase have successfully been separated and visualized by 1D-gel (SDS-PAGE).

A full scale DIGE experiment with water phase proteins is in the planning. Protein spots from water phase extracts will also be collected for identification. Protein extracts from the oil phase typically contains a high content of contaminants that co-extract with the proteins. In order to separate proteins from the oil phase by 2D-electrophoresis, more work on developing a good extraction procedure is necessary.

Publications:

No publications so far.