The Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) to Develop a Protein Identity Card
04.08.2021
An ambitious project to develop a "PROTEIN ID Card" is funded by the European Union with almost 3 million euros over the next 3 years and is coordinated by The Italian Institute of Technology, which also includes The University of Padua.
The newly invented device will be able to read the protein fingerprints and trace their identity quickly. Using spectroscopic techniques, a machine that uses light to interact with matter is capable of learning about its consistency and structure at the nanometer scale. Applications could be used in the field of medical diagnostics, genomics and the identification of biological contaminants, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The PROTEIN-ID project is funded under the European Union's Horizon 2020 FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) program that supports the most ambitious technology projects, known today as the EIC Pathfinder. The Italian consortium for the project is coordinated by Francesco De Angelis, who is head of IIT's Plasmon Nanotechnologies Lab, involving seven partners, including universities, research institutes and companies. Italian partners include The Polytechnic of Milan and The University of Padua. As well as Micro Photon Devices, which is based in Bolzano and offers itself as a high-tech company that produces high-speed sensors.
Professor Stefano Corni of the University of Padua Department of Chemical Sciences explains, “The University of Padua’s role in the project is to process computer simulations capable of identifying the protein on an atomic scale. This can be used to understand its fundamental mechanisms and thus propose modifications to further improve the sensitivity of the instrument. At this scale, it is crucial to introduce a description involving quantum mechanics, but this greatly complicates the calculations. As such, our models are calibrated to introduce quantum effects only where they are found to be indispensable, making it possible to understand the phenomenon that goes beyond that obtainable from the experiment alone.”
The objectives of the PROTEIN-ID project are in line with the international scientific research community focused on obtaining a complete atlas of human proteins. Known as proteomes, this entire set of proteins have a more specific purpose of identifying which proteins are present in the human body at the genome level, rather than just encoding them, which is essential in predicting the onset of possible diseases.
The research consortium plans to create a technological platform capable of "seeing" the individual amino acids that makeup proteins and, based on their sequence, trace the identity of the protein. It will be sufficient for the device recording the sequence in the chain of only a few amino acids as the reading will be compared with the protein database and the correspondence will be identified through the use of machine learning techniques. Each protein is characterized by a precise combination of amino acids arranged in a chain, starting from 20 basic amino acids.
The instrument’s sensitivity is guaranteed by the use of RAMAN spectroscopic techniques combined with the action of a nanometric sensor capable of optically excite the individual amino acids and read their response. At such a physical dimension it is necessary to use plasmons. The device will be built in such a way that it is possible to record in a very fast and precise way the passage of an amino acid that occurs in a microsecond. In that microsecond the amino acid is illuminated by the plasmon and its response, that is the RAMAN signal, is recorded. The succession of the different response signals constitutes the spectroscopic imprint of the protein, from which it is, therefore, possible to derive its identity.
